My ceramic shoe sculptures are my encapsulations of the beauty and style within historical portraits of fashionable women. Starting with the love that I share with many women for shoes, I take references from the clothing and surrounding features of these portraits to create idealistic pairs of shoes for the sitters. Typically, in such portraits, the shoes are only glimpsed or not seen at all & yet like a modern Emirati woman who wears designer clothes under her abaya these women would have paid as much attention to exquisite footwear as they did to the rest of their elaborate and fashionable clothing. My ceramic shoes pay homage to the talent of the painter, the fashionable taste of the sitter and the skill of the craftspeople that produced their attire.
Having trained both in ceramics and custom footwear I combine these skills to produce Art Shoes that are hand-built in clay but in a manner not dissimilar to handmade leather shoes. Elements of fabric and fashion such as bows, ruffles, braiding and beading are beautifully reproduced in clay using modelling, glazes & precious metal lustres.
Shoes are my passion, beautiful objects that I have been fascinated by much of my life. Their form constrains and yet offers me endless scope for creativity in terms of colour, style, pattern and texture.
The video shows a very much speeded up view of the making of a shoe - this is 40 + hours condensed into 11 minutes.