Artist Julie Green spent 13 years of her life painting the last meals of death row inmates on plates. The Oregon-native has painted more than 500 plates of the convicts’ last meals, in a collection of works she titled 'The Last Supper' project.
Depicting a wide array of food items, her work also incorporates usual meal choices like Pall Mall cigarettes.
Intriguingly, fast food from McDonalds and KFC are one of the most popular ‘last supper’ choices by death row prisoners.
Green began this project after she moved to Oklahoma. She had read about an inmate's final supper in the local paper, which published execution notices that recorded the inmates' last consumed items before death.
In response to queries about why she started collecting the inmate’s menus found in the paper, Green shared her outlook on meals:
“[To me] the idea of a meal whose purpose is not to sustain life, or be shared, but seems to have this other symbolic meaning [because of how it was published in the paper], really compelled me.”
Watch the video below to hear more about Julie Green’s motivations for ‘The Last Supper’ project:
[via The Daily Mail, images via Julie Green]