This project is a graphic novel: an autobiography of Prussian Blue. It is the personal history of a colour that changed the world.
Created by accident in a scientific laboratory in 1704, Prussian Blue is the first modern synthetic pigment. My telling is from the point of view Blue themself, blending fact and fiction to tell their life story. From their surprise conception we follow Blue on a journey through time and space that is also a journey of self-discovery as they grapple with questions of who they are and where they belong – while transforming everything they touch.
Our story begins with Blue’s unwitting creators, alchemist Konrad Dippel and colourmaker Johann Diesbach, crossing paths at the Academy of Sciences, Berlin, in 1704. Dippel lends Diesbach a supply of ‘potash’ contaminated with horse blood (containing iron), causing a pigment intended to be red to turn blue, as the compound iron ferrocyanide is created. In the midst of this unplanned chemical reaction, Blue comes alive and begins to understand their surroundings, absorbing through infant eyes the confusion, surprise and increasing excitement at their arrival.
We journey through paintings made possible by Blue, from early works at the Prussian court travelling out into the world to Impressionism. Its impact on the art world is huge, ending painters’ reliance on rare and expensive natural sources of blue like lapis lazuli. Prussian Blue becomes the colour of Van Gogh’s starry nights, Munch’s terrifying Scream and Hokusai’s iconic Great Wave. Blue is proud: mass availability of an affordable blue colour helped develop artists and movements; for the first time time, blue was not the preserve of the ultra-wealthy.
But art is the beginning; this beautiful, mysterious blue powder dissolves into history’s slipstreams: in botany labs and hospitals, in factories and offices, in nuclear meltdowns and international power games, it is again and again an agent of change.
2021: I created a 12 page zine as a proof of concept for this piece which was long-listed for the LDC 2021 Comics Prize.
2022: I spent time at Blast Theory on a residency programme
2023: I completed a short residency at The Grange; the work was long-listed for Self-Made Hero's First Graphic Novel Award 2023