Artist who painted same shoes 66 times wins prize

A Dundee arts graduate has won a £10,000 prize for painting the same pair of shoes 66 times. Jane Forbes, 47, won the "Shoe is Art" competition for her work Ad Infinitum, which was displayed at the Dundee Masters Show earlier this year.

Ms Forbes, who lives in Crail, took 66 days to create the work, starting a fresh painting each day without looking at the previous days' images. The University of Dundee said the work was "awe inspiring". Ms Forbes has just graduated from the university's Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design with a masters in fine art.



The competition was run by shoe retailer Dune. The artist will see Ad Infinitum displayed at the company's flagship Covent Garden store on Friday. Ms Forbes said it was a "massive boost" to have won the prize, and that the money would be used to support her work as an artist.

"Ad Infinitum was a work that began to evolve as I started the process of painting the shoes each day," she said."Every time I turned the page and began again. In the digital age, it would have been easy to do one painting and make exact copies, but that wasn't what this work was about." Each of the pictures has subtle differences, which Ms Forbes said reflected her mood on each of the 66 days.