My inspiration for my piece of work is called “The Pleasure of Being, Crying, Dying, and Eating. It was made by a Thai artist by the name of Montien Boonma and represents the cycle of birth and death.

The work was inspired by his grief and experience of the death of his loved ones, including his wife dying of Cancer. In this piece, he explores the limits of what you can make art with. To do this he used unusual materials such as bowls, bones and napkins. While building this painting, I quite enjoyed experimenting with the skeletal hand and the perspectives which people see it from and trying to get the view right.

In my painting, I chose to reflect on the number of deaths that are caused by world hunger, which is the number 9 million. The background is grey to signify the dullness of their life while starving to death in pain, and the splashes of red imply blood and the bone what happens to their bodies when they die. The bowl, food and utensils are painted in bright colours to contrast the rest of the painting. This is because I wanted to show the hope every victim of hunger has. The hands holding the bowl and chopsticks are painted in bones, partly because they’re used in the painting but also to represent the dead getting food after they pass away.