My inspiration for my piece of work was the installation by Montien Boonma called ‘The Pleasure of Being, Crying, Dying and Eating’ c.1993. Montien’s work was made when his wife was dying of cancer, and after she died, he dedicated this piece to her. While I was looking into Boonma and his artworks, I found out this piece in particular represented the cycle of life to a Buddhist: being, suffering, joy and death. Three years after his wife’s death Boonma died from cancer at the young age of 47 in 2000. What I love about The Pleasure is that originally it was supposed to be a temporary structure like the rest of his artwork, but even after 29 years it is still here. The artist added hidden quirks to his piece such as that he uses only 4 simple colours (white, red, beige and black) and this pulls the whole piece and its different elements together. I took inspiration from this and used ruby red in the background of my own painting. The numbers I have used throughout my painting are 100, 5250 and 535 million. A 100 is shown in my painting because that is the number address of KK hospital where I went when I recently fractured my ankle.  The reason I made this link is because Boonma’s installation contains many bones. 5250 is in tally marks and layered on top of each other on the right side to represent how many cases of cancer are reported each day. This is to connect with the inspiration of the original piece of his wife dying from cancer, which is a common problem today. Finally, I used 535 million because that is how many buddhists are in the world reported at the start of 2024. 535 million is actually written in Sanskrit as this is one of the two languages that buddhist monks need to learn. Some ways that I tried to reconnect this piece to me is that during my time where I was getting my cast, I noticed that around me were hospital curtains which were covered in stars similar to the ones I used in my painting.