My first mermaid painting

At last my first mermaid painting is completed! She was begun perhaps a year ago or longer and has never received great acclaim in her unfinished state.

The greatest compliment she received during her first year came from a gypsy lad of about twelve. The boy had appeared, with his gang of two other boys and a girl of fourteen, at my studio door one summer day when they were out causing a bit of a commotion in Dawlish town. Ah, but they knocked on my door for help, having been threatened by “twenty or thirty sixteen-year-olds”, and they insisted on coming into my studio for refuge. Once inside, their eyes darted about the room and the red-haired boy looked at the mermaid and exclaimed:

“I really like that drowned lady!”

“She’s not drowned,” said the fair, taller boy derisively. “Don’t you see she’s a mermaid?”

My mermaid was relieved that someone knew she wasn’t drowned and later that night Chris’s bicycle went missing.

Since then, my husband has bought a nicer new bike and the mermaid has enjoyed, or rather endured, several phases of development. Changes were made in respect to other comments, especially about her being “too busty” and “in need of a shell bra”. Well that was a bit of a ‘come down’ for my lusty mermaid – quite literally, as I set about  giving her a reduction operation straight away. Yet, still, she stayed unloved except by me (I had a feeling she would blossom into a beauty over time).

By the end of last year I had moved on and started a new mermaid on a larger canvas (5′ x 4′).

Unfinished large mermaid

But when I returned from Australia, ready to finish the larger work, I had a change of heart; my little mermaid’s eyes implored me to give them more character and the painting soon took final shape.

Now I’m thinking about more mermaid pictures – I love the theme. When I see all the beautiful children in my family I can imagine them depicted with mermaid tails. So I’ve been asking them if they would be my mermaid models. Daniel wasn’t too keen, as you will see from some of my recent photographs…