Greed Painting: Wealth, Excess and the Seven Deadly Sins | Julia O'Sullivan
- Julia O'Sullivan of Jupigio-Artwork
- Mar 23, 2024
- 19 min read
Updated: 1 day ago
Greed Painting by Julia O'Sullivan
Introduction – What Does Greed Mean to Me?
Greed pains my heart because I genuinely struggle to understand it.
Not wanting.
I understand wanting perfectly well.
I would like enough money never to worry about bills. I would happily eat wonderful food, drink good wine and stay in five-star hotels. I have ambitions for my art and there are things I would love to own and experience.
I don't think that makes me greedy.
It makes me human.
What I struggle to understand is the point at which having something stops being about enjoyment and becomes about accumulation.
How many houses do you need?
How many cars?
How many yachts?
How much money can one person possibly use?
And when you already possess more than you could spend in several lifetimes, what exactly are you still chasing?
That is the Greed I wanted to explore.
Having for the sake of having.
The endless need for more, even when more no longer appears capable of adding anything meaningful to your life.
Perhaps what troubles me most is that we have become remarkably good at encouraging it.
Over the past fifty years our world has become smaller. Television allowed us to see how other people lived. Technology brought that world closer, and social media placed it directly into our hands.
We see more.
We are sold more.
We are encouraged to want more.
There is always an upgrade, another luxury, another possession and another version of success waiting to be acquired.
Somewhere within all that wanting, I think we have become confused about what wealth actually means.
And then there is Charity.
Greed's opposing virtue.
This was where the subject became particularly uncomfortable for me.
Because Charity should be beautiful.
To give your time, energy, money or care to another person without expecting anything in return is one of the most generous things we can do.
But I began questioning what happens when Charity becomes part of the performance of wealth.
When giving becomes public.
When generosity becomes status.
When the person giving receives admiration, influence, publicity or perhaps simply reassurance that their enormous accumulation has now been morally justified.
A few karma points for the soul.
That doesn't make every wealthy person who gives to charity false. Far from it. Money given for good causes can change lives, regardless of who gives it.
It is the motive that interests me.
Would you still give if nobody knew?
That question became central to my interpretation of Charity.
And it made me realise that Greed and Charity might not always stand on opposite sides at all.
Sometimes they can walk remarkably comfortably together.
One accumulates.
The other reassures.
That contradiction gave me the world I wanted to paint.
I wasn't interested in creating a simple attack on money or success. I wanted to examine something far more uncomfortable: our relationship with having.
What do we need?
What do we want?
What do we display?
What do we give?
And what do we tell ourselves to justify the difference?
I don't know exactly where wanting becomes Greed.
Perhaps none of us does.
But I know there is a point where possessions stop serving the person and the person begins serving the need to possess.
That is the creature I wanted to put at the top of my painting.
Chapter One – The Need to Have More
What interests me about Greed is not simply the desire to possess.
It is the desire to possess more than somebody else.
That changes everything.
A possession can stop being valued for what it actually gives us and become valuable because of what it says about our position in the world.
The house is no longer simply a home.
It is bigger than yours.
The car isn't merely transport.
It tells you I can afford it.
The watch no longer tells the time any better.
It tells you what I paid for it.
Suddenly wealth has developed a language.
And we all understand it.
We recognise the brands, the houses, the cars, the jewellery and all the little signals that tell us somebody has money. Entire industries have been created around making sure those signals are visible.
That fascinated me when I began constructing the world within Greed.
Because once wealth becomes a measure of position, we need somewhere to place ourselves.
Above.
Below.
Successful.
Unsuccessful.
Powerful.
Powerless.
The result begins to resemble a hierarchy rather than an economy.
And hierarchies need levels.
That idea became the architecture of this painting.
I wanted wealth to physically rise.
At the bottom are the smallest homes. Above them are better houses. Higher still, greater prosperity. And eventually, far beyond ordinary life, sits an extraordinary city of excess.
The further upwards we travel, the greater the distance becomes between those who possess and those who support the structure beneath them.
That distance matters.
Because from a great enough height, perhaps it becomes very easy to stop seeing the people below.
They become numbers.
Workers.
Consumers.
Taxpayers.
Customers.
Voters.
Labour.
The individual disappears into the machinery required to keep everything functioning.
Yet the people at the bottom are not insignificant.
Quite the opposite.
They are essential.
Without them, nothing above can remain where it is.
That thought became one of the most important ideas in this painting.
We tend to associate power with the person at the top.
But what if the real power exists underneath?
What happens to the city if the people who clean it, build it, feed it, transport it, maintain it and keep its economy moving simply stop?
What happens if the foundation decides it will no longer carry the weight?
Suddenly the person standing at the summit doesn't look quite so powerful.
That is why I wanted the world of Greed to appear precarious.
The higher it climbs, the more impressive it becomes.
But also the more dependent it becomes upon everything beneath it.
Greed may believe that reaching the top has made it untouchable.
I wanted the painting to suggest precisely the opposite.
The higher Greed climbs, the further it has to fall.
And so I built it a ladder.
Chapter Two – Becoming Greed
At the very top of the ladder sits Greed.
He is naked.
That nakedness is deliberate. Beneath the wealth, possessions and status, I wanted him exposed in his rawest human form. Everything that supposedly makes him important has been added afterwards.
But Greed has been accumulating for so long that those additions have begun to change him physically.
Along his spine are gold-tipped body modifications, as though wealth itself has started growing from his body.
His face has almost disappeared completely.
In its place is an elaborate golden mask, decorated with jewels. One eye is gold and beneath it falls a single golden tear.
I wanted the tear to feel strangely contradictory.
What does someone who has everything left to cry about?
Perhaps quite a lot.
Because possession doesn't necessarily bring contentment.
The mask is important for another reason.
We can no longer see the person underneath.
Greed has accumulated so much that wealth has swallowed his identity. The display has become the man.
He hasn't simply become wealthy. He has become Greed itself.
His body is covered with jewellery, while tucked into his belt are the keys to numerous houses and cars he has accumulated.
They hang there almost like trophies.
He cannot possibly inhabit all those houses at once.
He cannot drive all those cars at once.
That isn't their purpose anymore.
They represent ownership.
Mine.
Mine.
Mine.
Around his waist sits another recurring symbol from this collection: Pandora's Box, transformed into the clasp of his belt.
I wanted Pandora physically attached to the place where Greed stores the evidence of everything he possesses. He carries the possibility of destruction amongst his trophies without appearing remotely concerned by it.
There is also something rather less dignified about him.
He has a pig's tail.
My reference to being greedy as a pig.
I like using familiar sayings within these paintings because they allow a little humour to creep into imagery that can otherwise become incredibly dark. This magnificent, jewel-encrusted creature may consider himself superior to everyone beneath him, but turn him around and there is still a little curly tail sticking out of his backside.
All that grandeur punctured by a pig.
But one object Greed carries is different from everything else.
Hanging from his shoulder is a charity box.
Among the jewels, properties, cars and displays of excess, Greed wants us to know that he gives too.
That little box introduces a question I will return to later, because Charity is supposed to be Greed's opposite.
Yet here they are already travelling together.
And Greed is not alone in another sense.
Clinging to his upper thigh is the Lust Devil.
His position is deliberately intimate and grotesque. He licks between Greed's legs while attaching himself to the body above him.
For me, Lust belongs here because Greed is about appetite.
Not sexual appetite necessarily, but the relentless desire for another sensation, another possession, another acquisition.
Greed wants.
Lust wants.
Neither is particularly interested in the word enough.
But the Devil is doing something else too.
While Greed displays everything he has acquired, the Lust Devil is preparing his punishment.
Above them is a vast city.
And into the liquid surrounding it, the Devil begins to pour oil.
Greed has spent his existence climbing towards this extraordinary place.
He is finally entering the world he believes belongs to him.
What he doesn't appear to understand is that this isn't his reward.
It is Hell.
The glittering city above him is submerged in boiling oil, and within its bubbles are the screaming souls of those who climbed there before him.
Greed has mistaken his punishment for his destination.
I think there is something wonderfully cruel in that.
He has spent so long believing happiness exists at the top that even when he reaches Hell, he still thinks he's moving up in the world.
Chapter Three – The Ladder Built on Bodies
Greed has reached the top.
But I wanted the viewer to look down and ask:
How did he get there?
Running through the entire structure, from the very bottom to the City of Greed at the top, is a human spine.
It is the backbone of the whole system.
Everything has been built around it.
I wanted the spine to connect every level because none of these worlds truly exists independently of the others. However distant the person at the top may appear from the person at the bottom, they remain part of the same body.
Damage the backbone and the body cannot function.
That idea became fundamental to the architecture of Greed.
Around this spine I constructed a ladder with three distinct stages, each representing another progression in wealth. As the structure rises, the houses become better, the communities more prosperous and the distance from those at the bottom greater.
But look at the rungs.
At ground level are the poorest dwellings.
From there, the first ladder is made from living human beings.
They are on all fours, positioned across one another's backs so that those above can physically climb upon them.
They work.
They carry.
They support.
Their bodies have become part of the mechanism that allows wealth to rise.
Higher up, the houses improve.
But the next ladder has changed.
The people have become skeletons.
Still the climb continues.
By the final stage, even the skeletons have disappeared. The uppermost rungs are constructed from bones.
Nothing recognisably human remains.
Bodies. Skeletons. Bones.
The progression becomes more brutal the higher we climb.
The people who made the ascent possible have gradually been reduced from human beings to the remnants upon which the next level stands.
Yet the spine continues through all of them.
For me, that is important.
However elevated Greed becomes, he cannot sever himself from what supports him.
We tend to look at enormous wealth from the top down.
We see the company.
The mansion.
The empire.
The fortune.
I wanted to reverse that gaze and make us look underneath.
Who built it?
Who produced it?
Who transported it?
Who cleaned it?
Who served it?
Who kept everything functioning while somebody else continued climbing?
My ladder strips away the polite language and makes that dependence brutally physical.
Greed is quite literally standing upon the people beneath him.
And that makes his magnificent structure far more fragile than it first appears.
A spine can carry enormous weight.
But it can also break.
Remove one rung and the climb becomes harder.
Remove enough and there is no ladder.
Break the backbone and everything above it is suddenly in danger.
Perhaps that is the great illusion within this city.
The people at the top appear powerful because they are high above everyone else.
But height is not the same as strength.
The strength is underneath them.
Politics hangs from this structure too.
Beneath the City of Greed are two grotesque political puppets:
Punch and Judy.
I chose them because politics can sometimes feel like theatre—two opposing characters performing their fight while the audience is encouraged to choose between them.
In their hands are batons carrying the word:
TAX.
They can batter one another with their TAX batons, swap positions and continue the performance.
Yet the spine doesn't change.
The ladder doesn't change.
The people supporting it don't change.
And Greed remains above them.
That is the point.
The political performance may change while the structure it hangs from remains remarkably familiar.
And perhaps the most unsettling part of the painting is that the people forming the foundation may never recognise what the spine reveals.
They are not separate, insignificant individuals.
Together, they are the backbone.
Greed may sit at the very top believing the entire structure belongs to him.
But without the bodies beneath him, there is no ladder.
Without the spine, there is no structure.
And without the foundation, there is nothing for Greed to stand upon.
Perhaps the people at the bottom were never powerless at all.
Chapter Four – Charity: Buying a Clear Conscience
Reflected in the windows of the City of Greed is its opposing virtue:
Charity.
But my Charity is not particularly charitable.
The creature sits surrounded by an enormous accumulation of coins. Wealth fills the room, while a golden crown has become part of its head, almost as though status and generosity have fused into the same identity.
From this abundance, Charity allows just a few coins to fall from the window towards the people far below.
Just enough to be seen giving.
There is another small but important distinction between Greed and Charity.
Upon Greed's head is a crown of gold containing an inverted cross.
Greed has crowned himself.
The cross has been turned upside down and absorbed into his display of wealth and superiority. It continues the visual language running throughout my Seven Deadly Sins collection, where the inverted cross accompanies the sin.
Yet hanging from Greed's own shoulder is the charity box, and upon it the cross stands the right way up.
The virtue is literally being carried by the sin.
I love that contradiction.
Greed can display the symbol of Charity while continuing to wear his own inverted crown.
He doesn't have to change.
He only has to be seen giving.
That distinction matters to me.
I have enormous respect for genuine charity. It doesn't have to involve money at all. Sometimes the most valuable thing we can give another human being is our time, our attention, our effort or simply our presence when they need us.
There can be something beautifully quiet about real generosity.
My Charity isn't quiet.
It sits high above everyone else making sure its generosity can be witnessed.
And that made me question the strange relationship between enormous wealth and highly visible philanthropy.
If I possess an extraordinary amount and return a tiny fraction of it, does the act of giving automatically make me virtuous?
Or can generosity sometimes become another possession?
Something else to display.
Another part of the public image.
Another way of demonstrating what a good person I am.
That is why I placed Charity inside the City of Greed rather than somewhere outside it.
They belong together.
My Charity has not challenged the structure that created the enormous pile of coins surrounding it.
It benefits from that structure.
It sits comfortably within it.
Then, from the safety of the top, it chooses how much should fall to those underneath.
The hierarchy remains completely intact.
The giver stays above.
The receiver stays below.
And everyone is expected to be grateful for the coins that fall.
This is the version of Charity that makes me uncomfortable.
Not giving.
Power disguised as giving.
Because there can be power in deciding who deserves help.
How much they receive.
When they receive it.
And whether they should demonstrate sufficient gratitude afterwards.
Charity can even become a kind of moral transaction.
I have given something, therefore I have done good.
The account is balanced.
The conscience is clear.
Carry on.
The charity box over Greed's shoulder becomes almost a shield against anyone asking uncomfortable questions about everything else he possesses.
And this is where I think Charity can become Greed's perfect companion.
Greed accumulates.
Charity justifies.
One fills the room with coins.
The other lets a few fall from the window.
Perhaps that is why I gave Charity a crown too.
There is ego here.
The pleasure of being recognised as generous.
The prestige of philanthropy.
The ability to turn giving into another form of status.
I don't believe that makes all wealthy philanthropists false, nor do I think large charitable donations should somehow be dismissed simply because the donor has money. Those donations can do enormous good.
What I am questioning is motive.
Would we still give if nobody knew?
Would we still help if our name wasn't attached?
Would we still offer our time if there were no photograph, applause, recognition or reward?
That, for me, is where Charity becomes interesting.
Because perhaps the purest acts of generosity are the ones that earn us absolutely nothing.
No status.
No praise.
No influence.
No karma points.
Just one human being giving something of themselves because another human being needs it.
My Charity has forgotten that.
It has turned virtue into another kind of wealth.
And while it sits counting everything it has accumulated, it can always drop another coin from the window whenever its conscience begins to trouble it.
Just enough to feel generous.
Never enough to surrender the crown.
Chapter Five – The Lust Devil and the Boiling Oil
Greed has climbed towards the city believing he has reached the ultimate expression of wealth.
But the city is already drowning.
Surrounding it is boiling oil — the traditional punishment for Greed — and within the bubbles are the bodies and screaming faces of other greedy souls already submerged beneath its surface.
Greed is entering his own punishment.
At his thigh clings the Lust Devil.
I deliberately made their interaction sexual and grotesque. The Devil licks between Greed's legs while attached to his upper thigh, but at the same time he is pouring oil from his flask into the vast boiling landscape above.
There is pleasure and destruction happening simultaneously.
For me, Lust and Greed make particularly appropriate companions because both can be driven by an appetite that refuses to satisfy itself.
The object changes.
The hunger doesn't.
Greed acquires.
Lust consumes.
Then both look for the next thing.
The Lust Devil encourages that appetite while quietly contributing to the punishment it creates.
He doesn't need to force Greed into the oil.
Greed is climbing willingly towards it.
That was important to me.
I didn't want Hell to appear as something that suddenly arrives after Greed has finished enjoying himself. I wanted Greed to unknowingly participate in constructing the very thing that will consume him.
The city therefore becomes both aspiration and punishment.
From below it looks extraordinary.
It is elevated above ordinary life, apparently untouchable in the sky. Reaching it seems to represent the final triumph of accumulation.
But once we understand what surrounds it, its meaning changes completely.
The golden destination is actually a boiling prison.
The souls already trapped within the bubbles show that Greed is not the first to make this journey.
Others climbed before him.
Others accumulated.
Others reached the city.
And still it wasn't enough to save them.
There is something almost absurd about the fact that Greed continues towards it regardless.
He is so convinced that being higher means being better that he cannot recognise Hell even when it is directly in front of him.
Perhaps that is one of the cruellest things about Greed.
It can make the punishment look like the prize.
The Devil knows this.
He doesn't have to drag Greed anywhere.
He can cling to him, indulge him and keep pouring.
Greed will do the rest.
And perhaps that is why I wanted the Devil attached so intimately to his body.
He isn't standing at a distance waiting for Greed to fail.
He is already part of the appetite.
Part of the pleasure.
Part of the excess.
And while Greed continues upwards, believing there must always be something greater waiting at the next level, the oil continues to rise around the city he has spent everything trying to reach.
He has finally arrived at the top.
He just hasn't realised what the top has become.
Chapter Six – Eden: What Does It Mean to Be Rich?
At the very bottom of the painting is Eden.
The white dove moves freely through it, and once again I have placed freedom within easy reach.
But in Greed, Eden made me think about something slightly different.
What does it actually mean to be rich?
We usually answer that question with money.
Wealth is something we count.
How much do you earn?
What is your house worth?
What car do you drive?
How much do you own?
But there are other forms of wealth that are much harder to put a number against.
Having people who love you.
Having time.
Feeling safe.
Laughing until your stomach hurts.
Eating something wonderful.
Sitting somewhere beautiful.
Creating something.
Being able to sleep at night without worrying about tomorrow.
Perhaps some of those things become particularly valuable because they cannot simply be bought and stored away.
That is what Eden represents for me.
Not poverty.
Not the rejection of ambition.
And certainly not some romantic idea that having less automatically makes somebody happier.
Choice.
The freedom to enjoy what we have without allowing possession to become the measure of who we are.
I would like more money.
I would like beautiful holidays.
I would love to walk into a restaurant without checking the prices and order whatever I fancied.
I'm not going to pretend otherwise.
But I don't want those things to become the reason I live.
That distinction matters to me.
Greed has surrounded himself with keys because ownership has become his identity.
Eden has no locks.
Nothing needs to be possessed before it can be experienced.
The dove doesn't own the landscape.
It simply moves through it.
Perhaps that is why I keep returning to Eden throughout this collection.
It represents something that all seven sins seem capable of making us forget.
We are alive now.
Not when we reach the next level.
Not when we earn another million.
Not when we own the bigger house.
Now.
Greed has spent the entire painting measuring his richness by what he can accumulate.
Eden quietly offers another measurement altogether.
Not:
How much do I have?
But:
How much of my life am I actually enjoying?
Perhaps that is the kind of wealth I would most like to accumulate.
Chapter Seven – Can Greed Ever Win?
There is something strange about Greed.
It can succeed spectacularly and still fail.
A person can acquire everything they set out to acquire.
The money.
The property.
The possessions.
The status.
They can reach the very top and look back at an extraordinary life of achievement.
And still want more.
That is what makes Greed different from simple ambition for me.
There is no finishing line.
If the purpose of the game is accumulation, then stopping feels like losing.
The number must continue growing.
Another deal.
Another property.
Another acquisition.
Another demonstration that you are still moving forwards.
And I wonder what happens when a person no longer knows how to stop.
That question became more interesting to me than simply condemning enormous wealth.
Because there are extraordinarily wealthy people who use their money, enjoy their lives and do remarkable things with what they have.
Money itself isn't capable of committing a sin.
People decide what it means.
So perhaps Greed is not measured by the size of the fortune at all.
Perhaps it is measured by the relationship we have with it.
Does what I own serve my life?
Or has my life become dedicated to increasing what I own?
That is a much harder distinction to see from the outside.
Someone with very little can be consumed by Greed.
Someone with enormous wealth may not be.
The bank balance cannot tell us what is happening inside the person.
That thought complicated the painting for me.
I began with this grotesque creature sitting above everyone else, and it would have been very easy to make him simply represent the rich.
But that would be far too simplistic.
Greed isn't a social class.
It is an appetite.
And appetites can belong to anyone.
Perhaps that is also why the figure is naked beneath all his decoration.
Strip away the gold, jewels, keys, status and spectacle and there is still just a human body underneath.
The possessions create the appearance of difference.
They don't create a different species.
And that brings the question back to all of us.
Would I know when I had enough?
I would like to think so.
But how can I be certain?
If I achieved everything I currently want, would I simply create a new list?
Would the dream become ordinary once I possessed it?
Would I look at the next person and decide that what they had was now the thing I needed?
That possibility is uncomfortable.
Because it means Greed isn't something safely contained within the monstrous figure at the top of my painting.
The capacity for it exists much closer to home.
Perhaps the challenge is not deciding how much another person should be allowed to possess.
It is being able to recognise when our own desire has stopped enriching our life and started controlling it.
That is a judgement only we can really make.
Greed will never make it for us.
Because Greed has only one answer to every question.
More.
Epilogue – When Is Enough, Enough?
After spending so long with Greed, I still don't have an answer to the question that started it.
When is enough, enough?
Perhaps that answer is different for every one of us.
What I do know is that I don't want to spend my life constantly preparing for a happiness that exists somewhere in the future.
When I have this…
When I earn that…
When I finally achieve this…
Then I'll be happy.
There will always be another this.
That is the trap.
Creating this painting made me think about the difference between building a life and accumulating one.
I want to build mine.
I want my art to succeed. I want opportunities. I want financial security. I want experiences and, yes, there are beautiful things I would thoroughly enjoy owning.
I refuse to pretend otherwise simply to make myself appear virtuous.
But I also want to recognise when I am happy.
That sounds ridiculously simple, yet perhaps it is one of the hardest things to do in a world constantly reminding us of what we haven't got.
There is another uncomfortable truth I have had to acknowledge while painting this collection.
I can criticise Greed very easily when I am looking at someone who possesses vastly more than I do.
But what would happen if I suddenly had their wealth?
Would my principles remain exactly where they are?
I'd like to think they would.
But I'd like to think is not the same as knowing.
That is why I cannot stand outside this painting and point upwards.
Greed belongs to human nature, and therefore some capacity for it belongs to me too.
Perhaps the best I can do is keep asking myself questions.
Do I actually want this?
Will it add something to my life?
Am I enjoying what I already have?
And if I have more than I need, what am I doing with the excess?
Not because I want to collect karma points.
Not because I want somebody to tell me I am a good person.
But because there has to be something more meaningful we can do with abundance than simply accumulate it.
I began Greed looking at the people who seem incapable of having enough.
I finished it looking at myself and wondering whether I would recognise the moment my own enough became more.
Perhaps that is the real danger of Greed.
It doesn't announce itself.
It doesn't tell us that we have crossed a line.
It simply moves the line.
Again.
And again.
And again.
Until one day we may discover that we have spent an entire life climbing towards something that was never capable of satisfying us in the first place.
So I am going to keep wanting.
Keep dreaming.
Keep working.
Keep building.
But I also want to remember to stop occasionally, look at the life I already have and ask myself a much more important question than What do I want next?
What if, for this moment, I already have enough?
Coming soon: watch Greed come to life, from the first marks to the finished painting, and see this extraordinary world of symbolism emerge piece by piece.
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