Envy Painting: Desire, Comparison and the Seven Deadly Sins | Julia O'Sullivan
- Julia O'Sullivan of Jupigio-Artwork
- Feb 16, 2024
- 18 min read
Updated: 1 day ago
ENVY This painting is entering its final stage is not quite complete however the text is describing the final layers.
Introduction – What Does Envy Mean to Me?
I think we can all safely admit that we have envied somebody at some point in our lives.
I certainly have.
But I don't believe Envy is automatically destructive.
There have been times when looking at what somebody else has achieved has made me want to work harder. I have seen something in another person's life and thought, I want that too.
For me, that can be fuel.
I have ambitions. I want my own gallery, my own workshop and a lifestyle that complements the life I am trying to build as an artist. I can see other people who have achieved versions of those things and, yes, I envy them.
But I don't want to take theirs.
I want to build my own.
That distinction became enormously important while I was thinking about this painting.
There is an Envy that looks at another person's achievement and says:
If they can do it, perhaps I can too.
And then there is the Envy that says:
Why should they have it when I don't?
That is a very different creature.
I have seen that kind of Envy close to home, and it can be vicious.
It doesn't inspire.
It resents.
It spits and hurls abuse. It gossips and whispers in the shadows. Rather than putting its energy into creating something of its own, it begins dismantling the person who possesses what it desires.
That is the Envy I wanted to confront.
To me, destructive Envy feels as though somebody wants to climb inside another person's skin and live their lifewithout having travelled the road that created it.
It sees the finished result but not necessarily the work.
It sees the house but not what it took to pay for it.
The success but not the failures.
The confidence but not what had to be survived to acquire it.
The life but not the years spent building it.
It simply wants.
And when it cannot have, admiration begins to rot into resentment.
That idea of wanting another person's existence became the starting point for my Envy.
But while making this painting, I also began looking beyond individual jealousy.
Because we live inside a world that continually gives us something new to envy.
We are shown wealth.
Beauty.
Fame.
Homes.
Careers.
Possessions.
Food.
Even basic necessities that some people can access easily while others cannot.
There is always another level above us and somebody apparently standing upon it.
So perhaps Envy isn't created entirely inside the individual.
Perhaps we have constructed a world extraordinarily good at manufacturing it.
And then there is Kindness.
Envy's supposed opposite.
I don't entirely trust her either.
Because sometimes the person who wants to enter your life doesn't arrive looking like an enemy.
Sometimes they arrive offering to help.
That thought took this painting somewhere much darker than I originally expected.
Envy became not simply a painting about wanting what somebody else possesses, but about what happens when wanting becomes entitlement.
Because wanting something can make us work.
Wanting somebody else's can make us destroy.
And somewhere between those two things lies the question at the heart of this painting:
Do I envy what you have because it inspires me to create my own — or because I believe I should have yours?
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Chapter One – When Envy Becomes Something Else
Envy begins with comparison.
We look at another person and notice something they have that we don't.
Perhaps it is money.
Success.
Beauty.
Talent.
A beautiful home.
A career.
A relationship.
A lifestyle.
Or simply an opportunity we wish had been ours.
I don't think that first feeling necessarily makes us bad people. In fact, comparison can be useful. Seeing what somebody else has achieved can reveal what we want from our own lives. It can give us direction and make us work harder.
The problem begins when inspiration turns into resentment.
Instead of asking:
How can I achieve something like that?
Envy begins asking:
Why do they deserve it?
That small change fascinates me because suddenly the other person's success becomes offensive.
Their happiness irritates us.
Their achievements somehow diminish ours.
What they possess begins to feel like evidence of what we lack.
And from there, Envy can become extraordinarily ugly.
It doesn't necessarily want to climb the same mountain.
It wants the person already standing at the top to fall.
That is the Envy I find disturbing.
I have seen how jealousy can transform into gossip, criticism and the quiet dismantling of another person. Sometimes it happens openly, through anger and confrontation. Sometimes it is far more calculated—a whisper here, a criticism there, a small attempt to alter how other people perceive the person being envied.
There is something deeply destructive about that.
Because nothing has actually been gained.
Another person's success has simply become something that must be reduced in order for Envy to feel taller.
But the more I thought about this sin, the more I realised that comparison no longer happens occasionally.
We live inside it.
Everywhere we look, somebody appears to have more.
More money.
More followers.
A better body.
A bigger house.
A more successful career.
A more exciting life.
We are continually being shown what exists on the next level.
And those levels do not stop at luxuries.
One person may envy somebody's designer handbag.
Another may envy their home.
Another may envy their ability to heat that home.
Someone else may simply envy the food on their table.
That matters enormously within this painting because Envy is not always born from greed.
Sometimes it is born from inequality.
It is easy to tell people that they should be grateful for what they have when you are standing somewhere they cannot reach.
And it is equally easy to look upwards and assume that everybody above you arrived there without struggle.
Both views can distort reality.
This is where Envy becomes particularly complicated for me.
Because the feeling itself can tell us something genuine.
I want more from my life.
There is nothing necessarily wrong with that.
The danger lies in what we do next.
Do we use that discomfort to create?
To work?
To change something?
To build our own version of what we admire?
Or do we allow the person who has what we want to become the enemy?
Because once Envy stops saying “I want that too” and begins saying “I want what is yours,” something fundamental changes.
It is no longer looking for inspiration.
And in my painting, I wanted to take that desire to possess another person's world to its most grotesque conclusion.
My Envy doesn't simply want what you have.
She wants to wear you.
Chapter Two – Wearing Somebody Else’s Skin
At the centre of Envy sits a figure who is no longer satisfied with being herself.
She has created another person to wear.
I wanted to take the idea of imitation to its most grotesque conclusion, so Envy has fashioned a human skin and physically laced it over her own body. She has constructed the person she believes she needs to become in order to possess the life she desires.
But it doesn't fit.
It was never going to.
The seams and lacing remain visible because this identity has been manufactured rather than lived. Beneath the false head, Envy's enormous green eye peers through.
The disguise may change.
The desire underneath it does not.
That eye was essential to the figure. We associate Envy so strongly with green that I wanted the colour to become part of her anatomy. She doesn't merely feel Envy.
She sees the world through it.
Everything is observed through comparison.
What have you got?
Where did you get it?
Why haven't I got it?
How can I become you?
And yet, even after going to the extraordinary length of making another identity for herself, she still isn't satisfied.
In her hands she is already cutting out the next mask.
The scissors she uses form an inverted cross, continuing the language of the cross that runs throughout my Seven Deadly Sins paintings. Here it has become a tool with which Envy destroys one identity in preparation for another.
That endless replacement matters.
Because if the problem genuinely lay with the mask, surely finding the right one would eventually make her happy.
It doesn't.
There will always be another face.
Another body.
Another lifestyle.
Another person apparently living better.
Envy can keep changing its skin forever because the dissatisfaction isn't actually contained within the thing it is trying to imitate.
It is underneath.
Even the body she has manufactured carries Pandora with it.
On the shin of the artificial skin is a Pandora tattoo, connecting Envy to Pandora's Box and the recurring presence it has throughout this collection. I wanted that darkness embedded into the false identity itself. Changing the exterior does not remove what is waiting beneath it.
Around her are the smaller details of imitation.
Her shoes are cheap knock-offs.
So is her bag.
They resemble the objects associated with status, but they are not the objects themselves.
I wasn't interested in criticising somebody for being unable or unwilling to buy expensive things. Quite the opposite.
For me, these objects represent what happens when appearance becomes more important than authenticity.
Envy doesn't necessarily want the shoe.
She wants what she believes the shoe says about the person wearing it.
Wealth.
Taste.
Success.
Belonging.
Status.
And if she cannot possess the original, she can at least construct the appearance of possessing it.
That is why I have her sitting upon her calves in this strange manufactured body.
There is something uncomfortable and almost pathetic about her position.
She has gone to extraordinary lengths to become somebody else, yet she remains perched upon a tiny pedestal of her own making, still looking towards everything she has not achieved.
Nearby, a cat with green eyes peers from around the pedestal.
It is my visual play on the idea of being “as jealous as a cat.”
Like Envy, it watches.
Quietly.
Constantly.
Its eyes fixed upon what surrounds it.
But the most important thing about this figure is that nothing she does can solve her problem.
A new face won't.
A different body won't.
The right shoes won't.
The right handbag won't.
Because she is trying to solve an internal dissatisfaction by endlessly reconstructing the outside.
She can steal the appearance.
She can imitate the possessions.
She can manufacture the image.
But she cannot steal the years, experiences, failures, work and circumstances that created another person's life.
She can wear somebody else's skin.
She still has to live inside her own.
And above her rises the enormous structure that keeps giving her something new to want.
Chapter Three – The Architecture of Envy
Above Envy rises an enormous city.
I wanted the landscape itself to explain something about this sin because Envy does not exist in a vacuum. We continually measure ourselves against what we can see around us, and the world I have created gives the people below plenty to look up at.
The city begins in mud bricks.
At the bottom, ordinary houses have been built directly upon them. This is the foundation—the people living their lives at the lowest level of this enormous structure.
But from those same mud bricks something else begins to grow.
The pedestals of wealth have their roots buried within them.
As the roots rise out of the mud, their colour changes into a rich gold-green, signifying the wealth accumulating above. I wanted the transition to be visible: the riches at the top do not exist independently of the world beneath them. They grow from the same foundation upon which everybody else is trying to live.
Yet the people in those houses can see what is above them.
So they build ladders.
The ladders stretch upwards towards the first level of the pedestals, offering the tantalising suggestion that perhaps they too can climb.
But they don't reach.
There is a gap between the top of every ladder and the first rung of the pedestal.
And sitting at the top of those ladders, painted in the same seductive gold associated with the wealth above, is one word:
TAX.
I deliberately made the word golden.
It belongs visually to the world everyone is trying to reach, yet it sits precisely at the point where their ladder fails them.
The climb appears possible.
The destination is visible.
But there is always a distance left to cross.
Above that first impossible step, the structure becomes even more difficult. Spikes guard the different levels and the recurring red and blue flags connect this hierarchy to the political language running throughout my Seven Deadly Sinscollection.
Whichever colour is flying, the people beneath are still trying to climb.
At the top of these enormous pedestals sit the things we have learnt to envy.
Wealth.
Fame.
Film stars.
Pop stars.
Beautiful homes.
Artwork.
Possessions.
Fuel.
Water.
Food.
I deliberately placed necessities beside luxuries because Envy depends entirely upon where you are standing.
One person may look upwards and envy somebody's enormous house.
Another may envy the fact that they can afford to heat it.
Someone may envy a priceless artwork.
Someone else may envy the food on another person's plate.
The structure therefore becomes increasingly uncomfortable the higher it rises.
The people below can see everything.
They can see what exists.
They can see who possesses it.
And they can see the enormous distance between themselves and those standing above.
That visibility matters.
We live in a world that continually shows us what we could have, should have or ought to want. Aspiration can be a powerful force—I know that within myself—but when people are constantly shown desirable lives while simultaneously feeling that the first rung remains beyond their reach, aspiration can begin to sour.
That is fertile ground for Envy.
The person looking upwards may begin by wanting the object.
Eventually they may begin resenting the person who possesses it.
I don't want this painting to suggest that everyone above is undeserving or everyone below powerless. That would be far too simple.
What interests me is the structure itself.
Mud below.
Gold above.
And a ladder that doesn't quite reach.
There is always another level.
Another pedestal.
Another person with more.
Another thing we are encouraged to desire.
And another reason to believe that reaching it will finally make us satisfied.
Yet Envy herself exposes the flaw in that promise.
She has already changed her appearance, manufactured another identity and constructed her own tiny pedestal.
And still she wants what lies above.
Perhaps the greatest trick of this architecture is not convincing us that we can climb it.
It is convincing us that, if we ever reach the top, we will finally stop looking higher.
Beneath Envy, however, an entirely different world is forming.
The ground is turning to ice.
And within its reflection waits Kindness.
Chapter Four – Kindness: The Sinister Reflection
Within the ice beneath Envy is her counterpart.
Kindness.
As with the other virtues in this collection, I didn't want to portray Kindness as automatically good simply because we have been taught to recognise it as a virtue.
I wanted to look at what happens when Kindness has another motive.
My Kindness is disturbing.
She has found the object of Envy's obsession and taken possession of her.
The woman is bound.
Kindness holds her amongst soft, plush cushions, surrounding her with comfort and care. At first glance there is something almost protective about the scene.
But look again.
This woman is not free.
Kindness has stalked her, taken the very thing Envy desired, tied her up and decided that she will be the one to protect her.
That is not kindness.
It is possession disguised as care.
This was important to me because destructive Envy does not always arrive openly announcing itself.
Sometimes it gets close first.
It can be helpful.
Attentive.
Generous.
Concerned.
It can make itself indispensable.
I'll help you.
I'll look after you.
You need me.
And slowly, care can become control.
That is the darker side of Kindness I wanted inside this reflection.
There is something particularly sinister about being controlled by somebody who insists that everything they are doing is for your own good.
Because how do you fight kindness without appearing ungrateful?
How do you reject somebody who continually tells everyone how much they have done for you?
How do you expose control when it has wrapped itself in generosity?
That is why I surrounded the captive figure with softness.
The cushions make the imprisonment look comfortable.
There is no obvious brutality.
No need for a dungeon when the cage can be made to look like somewhere safe.
For me, this is where Envy and Kindness can become strangely connected.
Envy wants what you have.
But perhaps the most complete way of possessing another person's world is not to destroy it from the outside.
It is to enter it.
Become trusted.
Become needed.
Become the person who helps.
And then quietly begin taking control.
This connects with something I have witnessed in human behaviour: jealousy can sometimes hide itself beneath extraordinary acts of apparent kindness. Someone may smother another person with attention while gradually inserting themselves further and further into their life.
The kindness becomes suffocating.
The recipient is no longer being supported.
They are being managed.
And eventually the giver can convince themselves that their interference is justified because, after all:
I'm only trying to help.
That phrase can hide a multitude of motives.
This is why I wanted Kindness reflected inside the ice rather than standing openly within the landscape.
She is the inversion of what we expect.
The virtue is there.
The appearance of care is there.
But something underneath it has become corrupted.
Just as Envy constructed another person's skin to hide her dissatisfaction, Kindness can construct a virtuous exterior to hide possession and control.
Both can become ways of entering somebody else's life.
One says:
I want what you have.
The other says:
Let me look after it for you.
And somewhere between those two statements, the person being envied can disappear entirely.
That is my darker interpretation of Kindness.
Not generosity.
Not compassion.
Not genuine care.
But control made respectable by calling itself a virtue.
And surrounding this corrupted reflection is the ice—the punishment waiting for Envy, created by the Devil at her feet.
Chapter Five – The Wrath Devil and the Ice
At Envy's feet sits the Wrath Devil.
His hand reaches towards the ground, creating the frozen landscape beneath her.
Ice is the traditional punishment for Envy, and I wanted that punishment physically woven into the painting. Beneath its surface are the bodies of other envious figures, already trapped within it.
They have become part of the landscape.
There is something I find particularly fitting about ice as Envy's punishment.
Envy can harden a person.
What might begin as a fleeting feeling of jealousy can be nurtured until it becomes cold resentment—the inability to take pleasure in another person's happiness simply because we wish that happiness belonged to us.
The ice became my way of making that emotional coldness physical.
But it is the identity of the Devil that adds another layer to the story.
He is Wrath.
Throughout this collection, I wanted the sins to interact because human emotions rarely remain neatly separated from one another. One can provoke another, feed another and eventually transform into something far more destructive.
I see that relationship very clearly between Envy and Wrath.
There is a point at which:
I wish I had that
can become:
Why should you have it?
And eventually:
If I can't have it, neither should you.
That final thought is no longer simply Envy.
Wrath has entered.
This is the point at which jealousy can stop being an internal feeling and begin looking for somewhere to direct its anger.
The Devil's position at Envy's feet represents that progression. He doesn't need to tempt her or persuade her. He simply waits for resentment to become powerful enough to feed him.
His hand creates the punishment at the same time.
That contradiction interested me.
Envy believes its anger is directed outward, towards the person or thing it resents, yet the ice forms beneath its own feet.
The punishment belongs to Envy.
The people it envied are not frozen there.
Envy is.
Perhaps that is ultimately the cruelty of this particular sin.
We can spend enormous amounts of emotional energy resenting somebody who may be completely unaware that we are doing it.
They continue living their life.
Meanwhile, the bitterness remains with us.
The frozen bodies beneath the surface are my reminder of where that bitterness can lead.
Not upwards.
Not into somebody else's skin.
Not into somebody else's life.
But into a prison entirely of Envy's own making.
And the Wrath Devil is more than happy to freeze the door behind her.
Chapter Six – Eden: The Freedom to Be Enough
Beyond the frozen landscape are the floating islands of Eden.
I have deliberately made them accessible.
There are no ladders.
No taxes.
No spikes.
No hierarchy deciding who is entitled to enter.
The white dove moves freely between them, representing peace, hope and another possibility entirely.
Throughout the painting I have created a world obsessed with having more. The city measures success through levels. The pedestals display what is desirable. Everything encourages the belief that fulfilment exists somewhere just beyond your current reach.
Eden contradicts all of it.
It asks Envy to do something far more difficult than climbing any ladder:
To recognise what is already enough.
For me, that doesn't mean abandoning ambition.
I certainly haven't.
I still have things I want from my life. I want my own gallery and workshop. I want to continue developing as an artist and see how far I can take what I create.
I can look at somebody who has achieved something I want and think, I'd love that.
There is nothing wrong with that.
The important difference is that their achievement doesn't need to be taken from them for mine to become possible.
Their success does not have to be my failure.
That is the freedom I wanted Eden to represent.
It is the point at which comparison stops controlling the direction of our lives.
I don't have to wear your skin.
I don't have to possess your things.
I don't have to pull you down so that I can feel higher.
And I don't have to become you.
I can admire what you have created and then turn back towards my own life and ask:
What can I create for myself?
Perhaps that is the healthier face of Envy.
Not pretending the feeling doesn't exist, but deciding what we do with it.
We can allow another person's life to make ours feel inadequate.
Or we can allow it to show us what might be possible.
One consumes.
The other motivates.
And perhaps the greatest freedom is reaching the point where we no longer measure whether we have enough by looking at what somebody else has.
That is why Eden is so close.
Envy has spent the entire painting trying to reach somewhere else.
She has never noticed that freedom was beside her all along.
Chapter Seven – Living with Envy: What the Painting Asked of Me
Creating Envy made me think about my own ambitions differently.
I have never wanted this collection to become seven paintings pointing an accusing finger at everyone else. If I am going to explore human behaviour this deeply, then I have to be prepared to recognise these sins within myself too.
And Envy is certainly there.
There are artists whose careers I admire. People with studios, galleries and opportunities I would love to have. I can look at what somebody else has achieved and feel that little pang of I want that.
I don't think I need to be ashamed of it.
What matters is what I do with it.
I can waste my energy resenting another artist for being further ahead, or I can go back into my studio and work.
I choose to work.
At 55, I still believe the things I want to achieve are possible. I don't see somebody else's success as proof that I have failed. If anything, it proves that the thing I am striving towards can exist.
That has been one of the more positive discoveries within this collection.
The sins themselves are not always simple.
A feeling can become destructive, but it can also tell us something about ourselves.
My Envy tells me what I want.
It tells me I am ambitious.
It tells me I am not finished.
The responsibility is mine to decide what happens next.
Do I turn that feeling into resentment, or effort?
Do I spend my time discussing why somebody else doesn't deserve what they have, or use that same energy to create something of my own?
That choice interests me far more than pretending I never experience jealousy.
Perhaps that is also what I want the viewer to discover when living with this painting.
At first, Envy may appear grotesque, even absurd. But underneath that ugliness is a very ordinary human emotion.
Most of us know what it feels like to look at another person's life and wish some small part of it belonged to us.
The painting doesn't ask us to deny that feeling.
It asks us what we are going to do with it.
For me, that is where self-reflection becomes more useful than judgement.
I cannot control what somebody else possesses.
I cannot control how successful they become.
And I certainly cannot become them.
But I can decide what their success awakens in me.
Envy can make me bitter about somebody else's life.
Or it can make me work harder on my own.
I know which one I would rather live with.
Epilogue – Envy: Wanting More Without Wanting to Be Someone Else
When I began Envy, I thought primarily about jealousy.
By the end, I realised I was painting something much more complicated.
Desire.
The desire to have more.
To achieve more.
To become more.
There is nothing inherently ugly about that. Without desire, perhaps many of us would never push ourselves beyond where we already are.
The ugliness begins when our desire becomes attached to somebody else's loss.
When I want that too becomes I should have what you have.
That is the line this painting forced me to examine.
I know Envy exists within me. I am ambitious, I compare, and occasionally I look at somebody else's achievements and wish I were standing where they are.
I am human.
But creating this painting has made me realise that I don't actually want somebody else's life.
I want to build mine.
And there is an enormous difference between the two.
The grotesque figure at the centre of this painting has lost sight of that distinction. She has become so consumed by other people's lives that she has begun erasing herself.
Perhaps that is Envy's greatest theft.
Not somebody else's possessions.
Your own identity.
If we spend too long wishing we were somebody else, when do we stop appreciating who we are becoming?
That question reaches beyond wealth or status. We compare our bodies, relationships, homes, careers, talents, opportunities and achievements. There will always be someone who appears to have something we don't.
So there will always be something available to envy.
The challenge, for me, is not pretending that feeling doesn't exist.
It is refusing to let it decide my worth.
I can admire you without becoming you.
I can want what you have without taking it from you.
I can be inspired by your success without wishing for your failure.
And I can acknowledge that sometimes jealousy gets the better of me without allowing it to become bitterness.
That is what Envy eventually taught me.
Perhaps we don't defeat Envy by wanting nothing.
Perhaps we defeat its most destructive form by learning to want without losing ourselves in the wanting.
I still want more from my life.
I still have things I intend to achieve.
And I still have Envy sitting somewhere inside me.
But she can keep her scissors.
I would rather make my own skin fit.
Envy a deadly sin the Deadly sin of Envy
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