Jenna Elsby-Bennett, 'Ballet Slippers' 2024

An original mixed medium painted by Jenna Elsby-Bennett in 2024.

Ballet Slippers is part of the “To Look For America” Collection. A series of paintings inspired by Jenna’s lifelong love affair with vintage Americana and the colourful characters that emerged from American culture in the 1970s. Artists, rogues, poets, muses, cowboys, dreamers and dancers - the collection is united by a sense of longing, of breaking free from the confines of society in search of something new, of something dangerously exciting - whether it be an unexplored open place (“Wyoming”) or simply a new pair of shoes (“Ballet Slippers”).

Ballet Slippers, is based on a series of polaroids taken by Andy Warhol in the peak of the Studio 54 era in the 1970’s.

I wanted to lean into the vibe of that era, and a place where the movie and rock stars of the era would flood to, so they could cut loose and act freely with abandon on the dancefloor. Down and dirty with the rest of us, with music as society’s great leveller.