Framed Shoes Prints

Depending on climate and geography, shoes were supposed to keep the feet warm or quite the opposite, allow them to breathe. Alma Lee and David Stoecklein celebrate Western boots in their framed shoe prints and some of these artworks are even named this way. Other prints also try to tell a story and the ones named If Only They Could Talk, Before the Dance and After the Dance are intriguing. They grow on the audience and manage to turn an otherwise mundane item, into a fascinating object.

This interest for footwear is not exactly new and even though shoes became more diverse over the last century, classic painters found beauty in them as well. Vincent van Gogh didn’t choose a glamorous name for his painting and let the brush tell the story, in the framed shoe print named A Pair of Boots. The washed out colors and the dull background only emphasize the intrinsic beauty of a pair of ordinary boots. They invite the viewer to find an explanation for why the famous painter found it worthwhile to put their image on canvas.