1. Art Essay: Jade Bennett
‘Ways of Seeing’
It is often said that ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’. When people view any particular
image with or without being conscious of it they are almost automatically making
denotations and connotations about the image they are seeing. They usually draw
interpretations from their own personal source of knowledge and experience or from what
they have learned from others about the image before they themselves have seen it.
This is the process of seeing and interpreting images that I was following whilst taking the
photographs of the still life grotto and afterwards when I was looking at the compositions,
colours and shapes of the photos. I selected particular photos of which I found I could draw
the most inspiration from in order to develop my ideas for my own art work. When I looked
at my photos I found that the draping and ornament-like shapes and compositions more
often than not reminded me of particular fashions. Since I am studying History I was
reminded of the fashions of women’s dress in the Jacobean and Tudor time and the 17th
century. Women’s fashions during these historical eras were often extravagant with large
flamboyant dresses with many accessories such as beads, feathers, elaborate powdered
wigs etc. These features were similar to the shapes and compositions I saw in the photos
which made me create those connections.
With my primary interpretation of the photos to be reminiscent of women’s fashion of the
17th century I needed to start to develop this idea of clothing and fashion ornaments like
the ruffles and see what further connections I could use to influence the direction I wanted
to take my art work in. Therefore I looked at Rococo costume. Whilst viewing rococo fashion
I was reminded of two things: Hairstyles and wedding cakes. The links to hairstyles were
immediately obvious stemming from the powdered wigs of rococo fashion but I decided to
look at a different time period – Edwardian hairstyle. Edwardian hairstyles were quite
complicated and elaborate created mainly for the purposes of beauty and glamour than for
any functional or sensible purpose. The other connection I drew was from rococo dresses to
cakes with emphasis on wedding cakes especially. This interpretation is not as obvious as
the link to hairstyles but if you look closer you can see that the structures of the rococo
dresses and the bright candy like colours are very similar to that of wedding cakes. The
photos tie in with this as many of the images could be interpreted as looking like fabric of a
dress, beading, and icing on cakes, strands of hair tangled and ribbons used for decorative
purposes.
I also looked at artists such as Katherine Wardropper who is a fashion designer who draws
her designing ideas from Elizabethan women’s fashion and Wayne Thiebaud who was
famous for his paintings of cakes, sweets and consumer objects. I liked the direction of
Wayne Thiebaud and the idea of cakes and confectionary so I decided to take pictures of
them. These images will direct me more towards sweets and cakes with emphasis on the

2. roundness and bright candy-like colours but I could then perhaps combine it back with my
first ideas of Rococo dresses and have them merge into one. These will likely trigger
thoughts of how fashion or comfort food like sweets and cake are important to each
individual and how it makes them feel – either good/fulfilled or bad/ugly. I also think it
relates to the senses of sight and touch and how those are important parts of an individual
and how they themselves perceive things or bring up an battle between what people want
(to be fashionable) opposed with what people need practically (to eat), and how they both
have to do with what people think what makes something attractive or bland.