This is part of my fish-woman series, an on-going study in female figures and nautical imagery. The title, Mermaids, refers more to literal mer-maids (women of the sea), and not the mythical half-woman, half-fish characters. To me, ocean is one of the single greatest metaphors for femininity. I have not found myself satisfied with the delicate, dainty, domestic imagery generally associated with women. Frail tea roses, china glasses, and lace, pretty as they might be, are too easily broken or put away in cupboards for my liking. (And I usually am the one to break them, too.) It has always puzzled me that the ocean, with its obvious connotations to womanhood in the way it bears life in water, should often in mythology be ruled by a male god, likes Neptune. I think the less Hellenized west and the non-western myth-makers understood this concept better.
Pastels on paper. Thanks much to my beautiful friend and model!
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