originally published at Posh, Broke, & Bored on 20 March 2010

London. Summer 2009. I had just moved to a loft space above a pub on Queensbridge Road, Dalston, ready to spend my summer in London for the first time. I’d just left my previous and first steady relationship—3 years since moving to London—and my self-esteem was still somewhat scathed. I was feeling deeply undesirable and needed some form of validation about my own attractiveness. Eager to explore the depths of my own sexuality and keen to taste all the flavours of meat, I embarked on what some would call a rampage, spurred on by nothing more than the desire to make up for being a late bloomer.

The sultry heat of summer provided a heady backdrop against my whirlwind of transitional lovers. Some stayed for many months, others for days, weeks, some I didn’t even ask their names only to have many a humourous run-in with later—the perils of being ‘on the scene’.

The one thing they ALL had in common was that they were undeniably beautiful. In the classical sense. Models, wannabe models, musicians, sexy Israelis (my favourite was a sniper for the Israeli army), I definitely gravitated towards the creative type since I considered myself an artist. An as an artist, I am fascinated by beauty, as Jasiminne Yip, I am satisfied only with the best. A visiting friend from NYC noted that my conquests were so beautiful, that their faces themselves were art.

And hence… MEAT was born.

Meat is a depiction of 5 of my favourite trophy fucks, named after different types of meat whose qualities they most closely resembled. Fish is pale, slim, subtle in taste just as he is underhanded in his methods of seduction. Chicken is ridiculously popular and easy to enjoy. Beef is a big hulking slab of masculinity with broad shoulders the width of a single bed. Lamb is exotic and unusual, and slighly spicy in it’s presentation. Rabbit…was lean, fast, sinewy, disappointing to the taste, and had big rabbit teeth.

The moodboard for MEAT:

My influences include Arcimboldo, Louis Borgeois, Damien Hirst for TAR magazine, Jan Svankmajer, Zhang Huan, and the butchers’ on Ridley Road Market.

I’ve already finished the full portraits of Fish, Chicken, Beef, Lamb, and Rabbit. However I’ve been struggling to complete the rest of the project, for the reasons:
a) I get nauseous and physically sick everytime I do a live study of raw meat. 
b) The self-doubt that inspired me to do this project has since left me.
c) I now lack the emotional (dis)content. 

My work is always a response to my problems, my way of resolving a personal issue. It is because I draw that I have overcome so many of my own emotional turmoils without anyone’s help—depression, guilt, neurosis, anxiety, Medea complexes, sexual deviances—drawing is therapy.

However I MUST and I WILL finish MEAT—not just out of respect for the specimens involved, but also so I can close that chapter in my life, and move on towards a more healthy relationship with sex and self-esteem.

Closure.

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