A Rhetorical Analysis Of Shara Hughes 'The Sitting Room'

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Rhetorical présis of The Sitting Room In “The Sitting room” (2010) Shara Hughes argues that a child’s view of the world is more vibrant and colorful than an adult’s. She gives the viewer of the painting visual evidence to prove that children are positive and fantastical thinkers. Hughes gives us a window into how a child might think in order to show that the imaginations of children should not be taken for granted and can be dangerously close to the truth. The Sitting Room is aimed towards adults to give them insight into the mind of a child in case they have forgotten what it was like to be one. Rhetorical Analysis Shara Hughes is an upcoming artist from Atlanta who paints in an American temporary style. In her painting titled “The Sitting…show more content…
When we are young we are urged to color inside the lines to make the “picture look pretty”, but seeing as how we were young and still learning how to color in general we tended not to care if the colors went outside the picture when we colored. Hughes uses this idea by painting past the border of the object. The most obvious example of this concept is the blue striped armchair in the back room. The blue paint spills way past the left side where the arm chair ends. This differentiates with the other side of the chair where the blue doesn’t cross the edge at all as if the child was concentrating very hard at the beginning, but got tired of concentrating and continued to paint blue past the edge of the chair on the other side. Hughes paints an analogy that people are pushed at an early age to think inside of the box or in other words, to color inside the lines in order to make the “picture look pretty” rather than exploring armchair edges and borders by leaping outside of the line away from the box of common thought. Hughes also uses different dimensions to display how children have a hard time translating objects from what they are actually seeing onto flat paper. Because their artistic skills and brain are still being developed, children rely on their imaginations when they can’t remember the specifics. For example, the lamps on top of the fire place are completely flat and look as though they could be part of the wall behind them which is not realistic in the mind of an educated adult who knows that lamps can’t be flat. The dynamics of these 2 dimensional lamps contrast from the closely accurate 3 dimensional proportions of the yellow piano in the other room. Hughes uses the contrast to illustrate how a child’s mind visualizes some things as flat and some things as multi-dimensional due to their

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