Red Shoes

I am sure you all know the Hans Christian Andersen fairy story 'The Red Shoes'. Briefly: A child covets a beautiful pair of red shoes. She persaudes her mother to have the shoemaker make her a pair, but she is forbidden to wear the sinful shoes to church as people will gossip. The child finally disobeys her mother's wishes and wears the shoes to church. A strange soldier comments on the red shoes and how they are beautiful dancing shoes. The shoes start to twirl and whirl uncontrolably and the child cannot stop the dancing. She becomes desperate as the shoes dance endlessly into the night and the next day. She is forced to plead with the executioner to cut off her feet. Which he does. The shoes continue to dance away with the severed feet inside. The child is repentant and dies.

To continue with my recent obsession, intuitive painting, I have interpreted the story in this piece.

The painting is full of whirling and twirling as I dance and paint through my subconcious. In the story it is not the joy of life that kills the spirit of the child, but the lack of it. Perhaps the moral of this tragic tale is that if we deny ourselves our true creative soul, we too will dance in addiction, whirling and twirling uncontrollably in the red shoes. The lives of many creatives have, through suppressing their true psyche, ended in tragedy !

Still whirling and twirling !