We could perhaps fool you and claim you're viewing a long-lost Jackson Pollock canvas, but it was Mother Nature who painted this blackfoot paua (aka rainbow abalone) shell. And modern art it ain't: Fossils from similar marine gastropods date back at least 65 million years.
Indigenous Māori people use abalone shells to represent eyes in traditional carvings. They're associated with the symbolic eyes of ancestors that gaze down from the night sky.
