Gluttony Painting: Excess, Consumption and the Seven Deadly Sins | Julia O'Sullivan
- Julia O'Sullivan of Jupigio-Artwork
- Mar 16
- 21 min read
Updated: 3 days ago
Gluttony Painting by Julia O'Sullivan
Introduction – What Does Gluttony Mean to Me?
Gluttony.
Well, this is awkward.
Because if I'm going to be truthful about the Seven Deadly Sins, I can't stand safely outside this one and point at everybody else.
I can be gluttonous. Big time.
Chocolate.
Wine.
Food.
Reward.
Comfort.
Escape.
I know the voice remarkably well.
Go on.
Have some.
You've earned it.
And once I listen, that voice can become surprisingly persuasive.
One becomes two.
A little becomes a lot.
The reward becomes excess.
And somewhere along the way, the sensible part of me that was absolutely certain it would stop at one seems to have quietly left the room.
That is the Gluttony I understand personally.
It isn't simply hunger.
Most of the time I'm not hungry at all.
It is the desire to consume because consuming changes how I feel.
Throughout my life, food and drink have sometimes been comfort, celebration, reward and escape. I can be incredibly disciplined, but there are moments when that discipline weakens and another part of me takes over.
The naughty voice.
The one that doesn't particularly care about tomorrow.
It wants pleasure now.
And the more I give it, the louder and more playful it becomes.
For a long time I could beat myself up afterwards.
Why did I do that?
Why didn't I stop?
Why couldn't I just have one?
But age and this extraordinary journey of self-examination have made me slightly kinder towards myself.
I have begun to wonder whether the important question isn't simply why did I consume too much?
It is:
What was I trying to feed?
Because sometimes I think Gluttony has very little to do with the stomach.
There are moments when that tempting little voice feels almost like company. When something inside me feels unsettled or alone, indulgence can temporarily fill the space.
It doesn't fix anything.
But for a moment, it changes the noise.
That is something I intend to explore much more deeply in the work that follows this collection, because I have started questioning where some of these behaviours were born and why we use particular things to soothe ourselves.
But Gluttony took that personal question somewhere much bigger.
If I can consume beyond what I need because something inside me keeps demanding more, what happens when that same appetite belongs to an entire society?
We consume food.
Alcohol.
Drugs.
Products.
Energy.
Resources.
Experiences.
Entertainment.
We consume because we need.
We consume because we want.
And sometimes we consume simply because we can.
That is where my Gluttony began to grow.
I wanted to take that little voice I recognise inside myself and make it enormous.
Give it power.
Give it access to everything.
Remove its off switch completely.
Then ask what happens when nothing is ever allowed to satisfy it.
Because perhaps Gluttony isn't really defined by how much we consume.
Perhaps it is defined by the terrible little word that comes immediately afterwards.
More.
Chapter One – The Voice That Says “Go On”
There is a moment I recognise very well.
I know I have had enough.
And then another voice appears.
Go on.
It doesn't shout.
It doesn't need to.
It is playful, persuasive and remarkably good at finding reasons why just a little more is perfectly acceptable.
You've had a difficult day.
You've worked hard.
You deserve it.
One more won't hurt.
And the irritating thing is that sometimes I completely agree with it.
That is where Gluttony becomes interesting to me, because there are moments when I am perfectly aware that I am making a choice I will probably regret later.
And I make it anyway.
There is pleasure in giving in.
For a little while I don't have to be sensible, disciplined or controlled. I can simply enjoy whatever is in front of me.
The problem is that my Gluttony doesn't always understand when the enjoyment has finished.
It keeps going.
I have often used indulgence as a reward.
Finish something difficult and have a treat.
Survive a stressful day and pour a glass of wine.
Feel unhappy and find something comforting to eat.
Celebrating?
Eat.
Sad?
Eat.
Stressed?
Eat.
Sometimes it seems remarkable how many different emotions can apparently be solved by opening a cupboard.
Of course, they aren't solved at all.
The pleasure is temporary.
Whatever was underneath it is usually still waiting when the indulgence is over.
That has made me think differently about my own excess.
Perhaps there have been times when I wasn't feeding hunger.
I was feeding an emotion.
And emotions don't have stomachs.
They never become full.
That might explain why the off switch can become so difficult to find.
If I am eating because I am hungry, eventually my body tells me to stop.
But if I am consuming because I am lonely, stressed, angry, unsettled or simply trying to escape my own thoughts for a while, there is no physical amount capable of satisfying what I am actually feeling.
The pleasure simply masks it.
Then comes the aftermath.
The point when the sensible voice returns and asks what on earth happened.
For years, that could turn into another kind of punishment.
Guilt.
Regret.
Promises that next time I would behave differently.
But I have learned that attacking myself afterwards doesn't achieve very much either.
I am human.
I have weaknesses.
Sometimes I give in to them.
What interests me now is understanding why.
There is a part of me that is incredibly controlled. I work, I think, I analyse and I constantly question myself. My mind can feel like a whirlwind of different thoughts and emotions, with some central part of me continually trying to keep everything balanced.
Most of the time it succeeds.
But sometimes I become tired.
The control weakens.
And that little voice sees its opportunity.
Go on.
Perhaps that is why I don't imagine temptation as something enormous and terrifying.
Mine can be rather charming.
It knows me.
It knows exactly what argument will work.
And sometimes, when I feel alone inside my own thoughts, it even feels like company.
That is harder for me to admit.
Because suddenly Gluttony stops being about being naughty with chocolate or drinking too much wine.
It becomes connected to something deeper.
Why can excess feel comforting?
What am I escaping from?
What am I rewarding myself for surviving?
And why, in certain moments, does self-destruction feel strangely like self-care?
I don't have all those answers yet.
Perhaps I never will.
But creating this series has taught me that I learn far more from questioning my sins than pretending I don't have them.
So I no longer want to silence that little voice completely.
I want to understand why it exists.
Because once I recognised how persuasive my own appetite could become, I began wondering what it would look like if I gave that appetite a body.
Not mine.
Something far bigger.
Something grotesque.
Something with absolutely no ability to say:
Enough.
Chapter Two – The Creature That Cannot Stop
I gave my Gluttony many heads.
Not one appetite, but many.
Each mouth is capable of consuming something different because I didn't want this painting to suggest that Gluttony belongs only to food.
Food.
Alcohol.
Drugs.
Pleasure.
Possessions.
Anything capable of feeding an appetite can become part of the feast.
The heads push and merge into one grotesque body, each mouth demanding its share. There is no elegance left in the creature because consumption has completely overtaken it.
It doesn't savour.
It devours.
And yet there is something deliberately contradictory about the way I have presented it.
Gluttony isn't scrambling desperately for scraps.
It reclines upon a lavish chaise longue, surrounded by abundance.
In front of it sits a table laden with fruit and treats. Around its enormous body are bottles, vessels and the remnants of everything already consumed.
An apple core lies discarded amongst the spoils.
That tiny object matters to me.
Something was wanted.
Taken.
Consumed.
Discarded.
Next.
There is no gratitude attached to any of it because Gluttony barely notices what passes through its hands and mouths.
Consumption has become automatic.
I wanted the body itself to reflect that.
It is huge, distorted and almost incapable of movement, yet its appetite continues perfectly well.
The creature has reached a point where consuming is no longer giving it pleasure in any meaningful sense.
It is simply what it does.
But perhaps the strangest thing about my Gluttony is that none of its heads has eyes.
It cannot see.
That was deliberate.
I wanted appetite without awareness.
The creature doesn't look at what it takes.
It doesn't see where it came from.
It doesn't see what remains for somebody else.
It doesn't even appear capable of seeing what its own consumption has turned it into.
Its mouths dominate everything.
For me, that blindness became increasingly important as the painting developed.
There is a difference between choosing to enjoy something and consuming without considering consequence.
Gluttony has crossed that line so completely that sight has become unnecessary.
All it needs is another mouthful.
Even the magnificent structure surrounding it reinforces its importance.
I built Gluttony's world with the grandeur of a classical temple. Columns rise around it and the creature sits elevated upon golden pedestals, almost as though consumption itself has been enthroned.
This isn't a creature hiding its excess.
It rules from it.
Its chaise longue is supported by inverted crosses, continuing the visual language I use throughout the Seven Deadly Sins paintings. The sin sits literally above the inverted symbol, comfortable in the world it has created.
And above everything, within the roof of the temple, are stone heads.
They too are gluttonous.
But their feast is very different.
They consume the snakes, toads and other horrors that wait within this world, an early glimpse of where Gluttony's appetite will eventually lead.
For now, however, my creature remains completely unconcerned.
It has abundance.
It has status.
It has comfort.
It has more available than it could possibly consume.
And still every mouth remains open.
That is what I wanted this creature to become.
Not somebody enjoying too much food.
Not somebody having one glass too many.
But appetite taken to its absolute extreme.
A body that has forgotten the purpose of consuming and remembers only the act itself.
And because Gluttony has no eyes of its own, I decided the rest of the painting would have to do the looking for it.
So I surrounded it with eyes.
Chapter Three – Eyes Bigger Than the Belly
Gluttony cannot see.
But the world surrounding it is covered in eyes.
They hang beneath the pedestals and appear throughout the architecture, watching, searching and looking beyond their own world towards somewhere else.
But these are not ordinary eyes.
Inside them are mouths.
I created them from the familiar saying:
“Your eyes are bigger than your belly.”
It is something most of us have probably heard after putting far too much food on a plate.
We look.
We want.
We take.
Then discover we never actually needed as much as we thought we did.
But I wanted to take that simple phrase beyond the dinner table.
Because our eyes are constantly being fed.
We see something and desire can begin before we have even considered whether we need it.
A beautiful meal.
A new product.
A different lifestyle.
Something exotic.
Something rare.
Something from the other side of the world.
The eye sees.
The mouth opens.
And consumption follows.
That is why I combined the two.
These eyes don't simply observe the world.
They are hungry for it.
They search for the next place from which something can be taken and consumed.
There is another contradiction here that interested me.
My central Gluttony has no eyes because it has become completely blind to consequence.
The eyes surrounding it can see everything.
Yet their ability to see doesn't make them wiser.
It simply gives them more opportunities to consume.
Perhaps that is something particularly relevant to the world we live in now.
We have access to more than almost any generation before us.
We can see how people live thousands of miles away.
We can buy food grown on another continent.
We can order something from the other side of the world while sitting on our sofa and expect it to arrive at our door.
The seasons themselves seem to matter less.
If we want strawberries, we expect strawberries.
If we want avocados, we expect avocados.
If we want flowers that cannot naturally grow where we live, somewhere will grow them and somehow they will reach us.
We rarely have to think about the journey.
We simply see what is available and decide whether we want it.
I find that extraordinary.
And I am part of it.
I enjoy that abundance too.
That is important for me to admit because I don't want this painting to become another comfortable exercise in blaming everybody else.
I consume from this world.
I enjoy its convenience.
I like having choices.
I don't particularly want to return to a life where everything is scarce simply so I can claim some moral superiority.
What interests me is how quickly extraordinary abundance becomes ordinary expectation.
Once something becomes available all year round, we begin to expect it all year round.
Once next-day delivery exists, waiting feels inconvenient.
Once we are given fifty choices, five somehow feels restrictive.
Our expectations expand remarkably quickly.
Perhaps our appetites do too.
The mouth inside each eye represents that relationship for me.
Seeing has become connected to wanting.
And wanting has become connected to having.
The distance between those things has become incredibly small.
But there is something the eyes don't show us.
They can see the product.
They don't necessarily see where it came from.
Who grew it.
Who made it.
What resources were required.
What was paid for it.
Or what was left behind.
Those questions exist much further down the chain.
And that is where this painting begins to move away from my own little battles with chocolate and wine into something far more uncomfortable.
Because eventually I began to see Gluttony not simply as a person.
I began to see it as a civilisation.
A huge consuming body with its eyes searching the world for the next thing it wants.
And in my painting, that body represents something very specific.
The West.
Chapter Four – The West at the Banquet
My Gluttony eventually became bigger than one person.
It became the West.
I wanted the enormous scale of the creature to matter. Gluttony towers over the smaller figures within the painting because I wanted to explore the imbalance between powerful consuming nations and the countries whose resources help sustain them.
Around Gluttony's body is a golden sash tied with a red and blue bow.
The colours continue the political thread running throughout this collection.
Red.
Blue.
Different sides.
Different promises.
But wrapped around the same enormous consuming body.
The colours may change, but the appetite remains.
Below Gluttony's golden world are smaller lands and smaller people.
From one wealthy island, figures make their way towards the great creature carrying offerings.
They climb the stairs burdened with goods.
They are shackled.
And amongst those offerings appears a familiar word:
TAX.
I wanted the difference in scale to be almost ridiculous.
These tiny figures labour upwards carrying what is demanded of them while Gluttony reclines above on its luxurious chaise longue.
It doesn't come down to collect anything.
Everything comes to it.
That relationship became my way of questioning how powerful societies consume beyond their own boundaries.
We have become accustomed to having extraordinary things available to us.
Food from distant climates.
Materials extracted elsewhere.
Cheap products manufactured thousands of miles away.
Fuel.
Technology.
Luxury goods.
Resources transported across the world because somewhere there is a market prepared to consume them.
But the finished product can hide an enormous story.
We see what arrives.
We don't necessarily see what left.
A country can possess something valuable and still see surprisingly little of the prosperity created from it.
Resources can travel upwards while wealth does not necessarily travel back down.
That is the imbalance I wanted these tiny figures to represent.
They bring their offerings to a creature already surrounded by abundance.
Gluttony doesn't take because it is starving.
It takes because it has the power to take.
That distinction is important.
This isn't survival.
It is entitlement.
The expectation that because something can be acquired, it should be available.
And because we have become accustomed to abundance, the absence of something can begin to feel like deprivation.
I find that unsettling.
The temple surrounding Gluttony reinforces that power.
It sits upon golden pedestals, elevated like something worthy of worship. The architecture gives consumption authority and permanence, as though this way of living has become something almost sacred.
But beneath that grandeur is another group.
Other gluttonous figures scramble amongst the discarded spoils, scavenging through what falls from above.
I wanted them there because excess creates its own hierarchy.
Not everyone invited into a consuming society gets an equal place at the table.
Some feast.
Some carry the feast.
Some survive on what falls from it.
And yet everybody is encouraged to believe they belong to the same world.
That is where the illusion becomes useful.
Keep participating.
Keep supplying.
Keep consuming.
Keep climbing.
Perhaps one day you too will sit at the banquet.
But Gluttony's table was never designed for everyone.
There wouldn't be enough room.
And perhaps that is one of the contradictions at the heart of the way we live.
We have created a culture in which continual consumption is treated as evidence of prosperity, while living on a planet with resources that are not infinite.
Something eventually has to give.
I am not standing outside that criticism.
I live in the West.
I enjoy what it provides.
I participate in the convenience, choice and abundance it has created.
I am sitting somewhere at this banquet too.
That is why I didn't want this painting simply to accuse governments, corporations or some distant wealthy elite.
Gluttony is enormous because it is made from all of us.
Every demand.
Every expectation.
Every convenience we have stopped noticing.
Every time we assume something should simply be available because we want it.
The tiny figures keep climbing the stairs.
The offerings keep arriving.
And Gluttony remains comfortably above them.
Not because it needs another mouthful.
But because somewhere along the way, we began to mistake the ability to consume for the right to consume without limit.
Chapter Five – Temperance: When Control Becomes Its Own Prison
Behind Gluttony is an ornate mirror.
And inside it is Temperance.
Temperance should be everything Gluttony is not.
Moderation.
Restraint.
Self-control.
Balance.
But throughout this collection, I have refused to allow the virtues to escape examination simply because we have labelled them good.
So I pushed Temperance too far.
My Temperance is locked inside a padded cell.
It has three heads, each trapped within its own state of despair, while its body is confined within a straitjacket.
The creature that should represent control has become completely controlled.
That contradiction was exactly what I wanted.
Gluttony cannot stop itself.
Temperance cannot allow itself to begin.
One has lost every boundary.
The other has constructed so many boundaries that there is barely any room left to live.
The straitjacket is secured with upright crosses, continuing the language of the collection. Gluttony's chaise longue stands upon inverted crosses, while Temperance carries them the right way up.
Sin and virtue.
Inversion and correction.
But the upright cross doesn't magically make everything happening within the reflection healthy.
Temperance has taken the idea of restraint and imprisoned itself with it.
That is why I gave it three heads.
I wanted its mind to feel divided.
One part says:
Don't.
Another says:
You mustn't.
And another is left dealing with the consequences of trying to maintain impossible control.
There is no peace in this room.
Only restriction.
I find this particularly interesting because we often treat self-control as though more of it must automatically be better.
Be disciplined.
Resist temptation.
Control yourself.
Don't overindulge.
All perfectly sensible advice.
Until control itself becomes an obsession.
Then the rules can begin multiplying.
What is allowed?
What isn't?
Have I been good?
Have I been bad?
Did I eat too much?
Did I drink too much?
Did I spend too much?
Did I enjoy myself too much?
Suddenly moderation has stopped creating balance and started policing existence.
That isn't Temperance as I understand its true virtue.
That is fear wearing Temperance's clothes.
Perhaps this is why I wanted the reflection directly behind Gluttony.
The two extremes face one another.
One says:
Have everything.
The other says:
Have nothing.
Neither knows how to say:
Have enough.
And that middle ground is incredibly difficult.
I know that personally.
After giving in to my own Gluttony, it is very easy to swing violently in the opposite direction.
Right. That's it.
I'm never doing that again.
Rules appear.
Promises are made.
Control returns with a vengeance.
But extremes have a habit of feeding one another.
If I make the rules impossible, eventually I will break them.
And when I break them, that naughty little voice from earlier is waiting.
Well, you've ruined it now.
You might as well carry on.
Then Gluttony returns.
Perhaps that is why balance is so much harder than either extreme.
Excess requires no restraint.
Total restriction requires no negotiation.
Balance requires constant judgement.
It changes according to circumstance.
It allows pleasure without demanding punishment afterwards.
It permits discipline without turning discipline into a cage.
That is the Temperance I would like to find.
But she isn't inside this mirror.
My Temperance has gone too far.
She has restrained herself until restraint has become another form of torment.
And that is why the padded cell matters.
The punishment hasn't been imposed upon her by Gluttony.
She has created another kind of prison entirely.
Gluttony is trapped by appetite.
Temperance is trapped by control.
And somewhere between the banquet and the straitjacket is the balance neither of them has managed to find.
Chapter Six – The Sloth Devil and the Feast of Hell
Draped casually across the side of Gluttony's chaise longue is the Sloth Devil.
He looks remarkably comfortable.
There is something almost lazy about his position, which is exactly how I wanted him. He doesn't need to chase Gluttony, threaten it or force it towards its fate.
He simply lounges there with a rather knowing smile.
And in his hand is a platter.
But this is not another plate of delicious treats.
Upon it are snakes, toads and rats.
He offers them to Gluttony as though presenting the finest delicacies at a banquet.
This is Gluttony's punishment.
In Hell, the creature that spent its existence demanding whatever pleased its appetite will be forced to consume everything repulsive.
The feast continues.
Only the menu changes.
I love the cruelty of that.
Gluttony's greatest pleasure is not taken away.
It is turned against it.
The mouths that could never close will still be fed, but now there will be no pleasure attached to what enters them.
No favourite food.
No comforting drink.
No delicious indulgence.
Just an endless banquet of things it would once have rejected.
The Sloth Devil knows exactly what is coming.
That is why I gave him that wry smile.
He isn't tempting Gluttony with the platter.
He is almost introducing it to its future.
You wanted to consume?
Very well.
Consume this.
There is no sympathy in him.
And there is another detail high above the scene that reveals what eventually happens.
Within the roof of Gluttony's magnificent temple are stone heads of the gluttonous.
Their mouths are already consuming the snakes and other horrors of the punishment.
They have become part of the architecture.
I wanted those heads there almost as a warning carved into Gluttony's own palace.
Its fate is already displayed above it.
But the creature cannot see.
That makes the scene even more sinister to me.
The evidence is there.
The Devil is there.
The punishment is being offered directly beside it.
And still Gluttony carries on.
Perhaps that is why Sloth was the Devil I wanted beside this particular sin.
Sloth doesn't need to create the destruction.
It can simply allow it to happen.
Do nothing.
Intervene in nothing.
Let the appetite continue unchecked until consequence arrives by itself.
There is something almost effortless about the Devil's role.
He doesn't have to manufacture Gluttony's weakness.
He merely provides another plate.
And Gluttony does what Gluttony has always done.
It opens its mouth.
That relationship makes the Devil less of a traditional tempter and more of an accomplice.
He knows that Gluttony requires very little encouragement.
Why wrestle with a creature when you can simply keep feeding it?
The punishment therefore becomes wonderfully circular.
Gluttony consumed because it wanted pleasure.
Eventually it must consume without pleasure.
The thing that once provided comfort becomes torment.
The appetite that once demanded satisfaction becomes the mechanism of punishment itself.
And perhaps that is the darkest part of this particular Hell.
Gluttony doesn't finally discover that it has consumed too much.
It discovers that it will never be allowed to stop consuming at all.
Chapter Seven – Eden: Stepping Away from the Table
Beyond all this consumption is Eden.
Once again, I have deliberately placed it within reach.
Throughout the Seven Deadly Sins collection, Eden has become an important part of my visual language. It is never some impossible paradise hidden beyond the painting.
It is there.
The white dove moves freely through it, untouched by everything happening above.
In Gluttony, I wanted Eden to represent something incredibly simple:
The freedom to step away.
Gluttony's entire world is built around taking.
The table is full.
The offerings arrive.
The mouths remain open.
Everything within that enormous structure assumes that consumption must continue.
Eden doesn't participate.
It doesn't offer another product.
It doesn't demand payment.
It doesn't promise that happiness will arrive with the next mouthful.
It simply exists beyond the feast.
I find that idea increasingly important.
We live surrounded by things designed to keep us consuming. There is always something else available to eat, drink, watch, buy, click, order or experience.
Silence has almost become unusual.
Doing nothing can feel uncomfortable.
Even boredom is something we immediately try to fill.
Perhaps that is another form of appetite.
Not hunger for food, but an inability to leave an empty space empty.
I recognise that in myself.
I can fill a difficult moment remarkably quickly.
Something to eat.
A glass of wine.
Something to watch.
Something to occupy my mind.
Anything rather than sit quietly with whatever is happening inside me.
But perhaps occasionally the empty space is exactly where I need to be.
The dove represents that possibility.
It doesn't need to fight Gluttony.
It doesn't need to destroy the temple or silence all those mouths.
It simply flies somewhere else.
There is something powerful in that.
Not every temptation has to be conquered.
Sometimes we can just walk away from it.
That doesn't mean I am suddenly going to become wonderfully disciplined.
I know myself better than that.
There will still be chocolate.
There will still be wine.
There will undoubtedly still be moments when the little voice says go on and I happily agree.
But I am beginning to understand that indulgence itself isn't what troubles me.
It is what happens when I use indulgence to avoid something else.
That is where Eden becomes personal.
Perhaps freedom isn't never giving in.
Perhaps it is reaching the point where I can recognise what I am actually asking for.
Am I hungry?
Am I celebrating?
Am I enjoying myself?
Or am I trying to silence something?
Those are very different appetites.
The painting cannot answer that question for me.
But creating it has made me ask it.
And maybe that is enough.
Because the creature above Eden cannot question anything.
It has no eyes.
It has no pause.
It has only mouths.
Consume.
Consume.
Consume.
The dove has none of that urgency.
It simply moves through the landscape.
Free from the banquet.
Free from the demands.
Free from the endless expectation that every empty space must immediately be filled.
Perhaps that is why Eden remains so close throughout these paintings.
We spend so much of our lives searching for the next thing that might satisfy us.
Sometimes freedom might begin by discovering that we don't need another thing at all.
Epilogue – Learning to Live With My Appetite
Of all the sins I have explored, Gluttony has been one of the easiest for me to recognise in myself.
I know this one.
I have lived with it.
And perhaps what has changed most through creating this painting is not my behaviour, but the way I judge myself for it.
For years, excess could be followed by guilt.
I had been weak.
I should have known better.
I should have had more control.
There is something quite destructive about that cycle because once the pleasure has gone, punishment takes its place.
And I have begun to question what either of them actually achieves.
The older I become, the less interested I am in pretending I can divide myself neatly into good and bad parts.
There are parts of me I am proud of.
There are parts I would happily improve.
And there are some slightly knarly bits that occasionally escape and have a wonderful time.
They are all me.
This entire collection has forced me to accept that.
I called these paintings the Seven Deadly Sins, but somewhere along the journey they became seven conversations with myself.
Why does this make me angry?
Why does that make me jealous?
Why do I want recognition?
Why do I sometimes want too much?
Why do I occasionally consume far beyond what I need?
The answers haven't always been comfortable.
But they have been useful.
With Gluttony, I have started to understand that punishment probably isn't the answer.
If I use excess to comfort myself and then attack myself for giving in to it, I haven't solved the original problem.
I have simply added another unpleasant feeling to the pile.
So perhaps I need curiosity before criticism.
Instead of:
Why did you do that again?
Perhaps:
What happened today that made you need it?
That is a very different conversation to have with myself.
And it has opened another door.
Because if some of these behaviours are ways of soothing, escaping, defending or protecting ourselves, then eventually we have to ask where that need came from.
That question reaches beyond the Seven Deadly Sins.
It reaches backwards.
Into experience.
Memory.
Damage.
The things we carry without necessarily realising we are still carrying them.
That is territory I want to explore in my next series on trauma.
I want to dig further into my own psyche and ask why certain parts of me developed as they did.
Why do we create coping mechanisms?
Why do some of them become destructive?
And why can the things that hurt us sometimes feel like the very things keeping us safe?
I don't yet know what I will find there.
That is rather the point.
For now, Gluttony has taught me something simpler.
I don't have to hate the part of myself that sometimes gives in.
I can recognise it.
Question it.
Laugh at it occasionally.
And try to understand it.
I will undoubtedly overindulge again.
There will be another piece of chocolate.
Another glass of wine.
Another moment when I know perfectly well I have had enough and hear that familiar little voice:
Go on.
Maybe sometimes I will say no.
Maybe sometimes I won't.
But at least now, when the feast is over, I can ask myself something more useful than whether I have been good or bad.
What was I really hungry for?
Gluttony — When Enough Became Too Much
Gluttony began with something enormous.
But over the course of this three-year journey, I realised that size alone wasn't enough to express what I wanted this painting to become.
The Seven Deadly Sins Collection is where the wider story begins. It introduces the questions that led me back to these ancient sins and virtues and made me wonder how comfortably—or uncomfortably—they still sit within the way we live today.
The Gluttony Creation Gallery reveals what happened when those questions reached the painting surface.
There, you can watch the original, more aloof formation gradually transform. It becomes increasingly embellished as my thoughts about Gluttony's gilded existence develop. New land appears. The atmosphere changes. Even towards the final layers, new elements arrive and alter the personality of the painting.
Rather fittingly, Gluttony kept asking for more.
Until I finally had to decide that enough was enough.
Here, in the Artist Journal, you have gone beyond that process.
You've discovered that my Gluttony isn't simply about eating too much.
You've looked beneath the excess and explored the appetite behind it—the consumption, entitlement and consequences embedded throughout the finished work, as well as the uncomfortable relationship between Gluttony and its supposed opposite, Temperance.
All those details that accumulated over the years now have their reason for being there.
The Collection asks why I began questioning the Sins.
The Creation Gallery shows how Gluttony grew increasingly excessive.
The Artist Journal reveals what all that excess actually means.
Three parts of the same story.
And perhaps Gluttony leaves us with the simplest question in the entire collection:
When we already have enough, why do we still want more?
Coming soon: watch the complete creation of Gluttony in video, from its monumental beginnings to the final brushstroke.
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