My inspiration for this piece of work was The Pleasure of Being, Crying, Dying and Eating by Montien Boonma. Montien Boonma was born on the 25th of February in 1953 and died on the 17th of August in the year 2000. He died from Cancer, the same fate as his wife who died in 1994 and who was also Boonma’s inspiration for the piece, created in 1993. The death of a family member was also the inspiration for my artwork and is slightly reflected in my painting, using numbers. 

Whilst creating this painting, I researched Montien Boonma’s religion (Buddhism) and how it was reflected in his artwork using chopsticks, a buddhist tradition after death. As well as the chopsticks reference, the title of his installation reflects how life goes on after the death of a loved one and the 4 words used are a sort of cycle of life. My choice of numbers in my artwork were 25, 93 and 3. 25 and 93 are the coordinates of where buddhism was invented in North Eastern India, 25 North and 93 East. The number 3 is larger than the other numbers because of the Number 3’s dual meaning in my artwork. The number 3 is when funeral arrangements should ideally be made in Sikhism (the religion I loosely follow) 3 days after death, which links back to my personal connection to this painting, as stated earlier. Aswell as this, whilst creating the artwork I learnt more about Sikhism and felt a connection to the family member I lost. 

When I first saw Montien Boonma’s artwork I was immediately drawn to it and I thoroughly enjoyed researching and creating my piece based on the artwork. The use of the colour red and similar shades of brown, as well as white, are my homage to the original artwork, which follows a similar colour palette. I also used space effectively in the red and white areas of my painting, which are divided because of the colour split in Boonma’s instalment. I used cropping around the edges of my artwork and the number 2 is also split in between the red and white sections of the painting. I also used a fade on my number 3 which fades from a light brown to red on the bottom. My use of the colour blue was to give the artwork a different colour rather than my palette of reds, browns, oranges and white and gives my artwork a personal and unique touch compared to Boonma’s original piece.