Five Guys
After the period working with Seb, I wanted to focus on personal stories of sick people.
So I decided to paint observational portraits of them based on long term observation with private interviews.
I could conduct this project with 5 models. I wanted to understand one’s overall life and I wanted to portray one’s pain and struggle.
Before I decided the images, I’ve discussed with each model and I reflected their ideas too. This process took a long time, including time painting.
Seb has suffered from Multiple Sclerosis. He wanted to be shown in the portrait as a strong fighter with his crutches and splints.
And he never gave up his dream to be an actor so I painted him on the red carpet.
Micheal has been suffering from bipolar over 25 years. Now he can control his condition by exercise and creative activities like photography or writing poems, so I put controller, running shoes, camera and his poem as a background.
And I illustrated about bipolar symptoms with pope vestment made of moths, and black ravens eating the moths.
J has been suffering from chronic insomnia for 5 years. He asked me to paint him inside a bath as it was his best remedy. So I put him inside a fish tank with fishes which never sleep deeply, and I put his extra remedies such as writing, wine, and lavenders together.
This guy was a homeless man commuting to the shop near by my place. I have interviewed him and he always talked only about his lost dog.
I painted his worried look with an empty spot for his dog.
Ahn was overweight and had a depression for it. He wanted a fairy tale image with his struggling body. So, I depicted him struggling to carry a big table to a cave. And I made up the fairy characters and put them helping him to get super foods and destroying his favourite, mc donalds on the table.
This fairy character became “Petits Pieds”
