Artist Statement

Appetence is a piece inspired by Han Kang’s book The Vegetarian, which follows a young woman’s experience as a vegetarian in South Korean society, and subsequent descent into madness. The book introduces themes of isolation, suffering, and societal pressure in an extremely carnivore/male dominated environment. I wanted to focus on conveying the feelings that accompany these themes, as compared to literal imagery of the book’s concept that I depicted in my previous work, Hunger. This painting depicts the loneliness the protagonist experiences – the desire to separate herself from the practices and mindset of her society and the people around her. In the book, she no longer wishes to be human because of how animalistic and cruel people are. In my painting, I turned this around to depict society as the wolves, and herself as the human breaking free from primal urges. Her anguish is two-fold, a suffering caused by the world’s conditions and expectations, and a mental-break as she buckles under these overwhelming pressures. As society comes into shape closer to the viewer, the wolves blur into a nondescript mass, eliciting the question – are the wolves truly there or all in her head?

The process for this painting was challenging at times, particularly when working with the shine of the acrylic paint. Mixing matte medium into the black as I worked did help and allowed me to create a darker and more enveloping effect for the area around the sickly figure. As the main goal was to create a sense of apprehension and suffocation through darkness, I took inspiration from night photography to emphasize the contrast between a dark background and a lighter subject. In using the concept of photography of an unaware subject, the painting conveys a sense of interruption to the flow of an event in motion, additionally emphasized by the flowing of the wolves’ coats.