Original artwork description:

In Roman times, although the colour purple was forcibly expelled from rancid aquatic arthropods, it nevertheless became associated with royalty and the nobility because it was so rare and expensive to manufacture that only the wealthy could afford it. Tyrian purple, made from murdering two different types of Mediterranean shellfish and massaging droplets of dye from their hypobranchial gland, required the assasination of 250000 shellfish to make 30 grams of dye. In Japan purple was also 'kin-jiki' - a forbidden colour, off limits to ordinary people. In the 1980s a Japanese company, Purpura Imperial, was granted a licence by Mexico to extract purple dye from the local caracol sea snail. Instead of just milking the limpet-like creature, however, as had been done for centuries, they slaughtered them wholesale and virtually wiped the population out. In The Colour Purple Shug says: 'It pees God off if you walk by the colour purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it.' Phew!

Materials used:

Acrylics

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