This ATC features a woman from a Botticelli painting
transformed into a mermaid with two angels behind her. While I was working on it I was transported
to my childhood and began pondering my connections to mermaids, the lake and
the sea. When I was growing up I spent
many hours swimming in a lake fed by freshwater springs. I would encounter all sorts of wetland
creatures as I swam, like small schools of fish, turtles and even otters. Sometimes I would get tangled in the seaweed.
Swimming and rowing were respites from a
sometimes stressful life inside the house. I always found wonder and a sense of
peace from observing the tides, floating and swimming deep down towards the
sandy bottom of the lake. As I grew
older my uncle introduced me to the Ifa path of the Yoruba people and that was
my first time of reflecting on the diverse types of mermaids of the spiritual
world. At first he thought I was a child
of Oshun, but eventually it was revealed to him that I was child of Yemaya and
Olokun, the two water orisha of the upper and lower seas. The notion of
connection to Yemaya/Olokun, male/female energy of the sea has always made
sense. I revere the sea and have spent
many hours when I lived in New Jersey at the shore and many additional hours by
the ocean in La Jolla and Del Mar California, I was even married overlooking
the sea. I have done seascapes and
drawings of the sea, fish, and shells alone and in combination with
self-portraiture. I feel an immense
pleasure, satisfaction and sense of peace when I am next to bodies of water,
large or small—even streams. When I saw
the mermaid images offered by Art Chix Studios I knew I had to have them to
work into my art. Mermaids are
mysterious and have held a power over our psyches historically. They seem to evolve and change within a
cultural and historical context but they also always seem to pop up in our
various art forms. I find it interesting
that in parts of Africa, mermaid spiritual beings, Mami Wata are depicted as
being White and they are believed to be foreign beings that travel mysteriously
into the African waters. I enjoy the
idea of bringing together angels and mermaids while contemplating the spiritual
nature of each in a single piece. In
this ATC, the angels are looking out towards the mermaid with the same wonder
and awe and that many of us feel towards them.
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