In my mind, mermaids are jealous creatures, but I think maybe I confuse them with sirens. To try to clear things up, I googled “mermaids and jealousy” and came across this article: Mermaids Origin and Etymology.
“Greeks philosophers further more refined the thought of origin of life that came from the sea with the creation of two female goddesses Aphrodite (meaning “born from the sea foam”) and Venus. They represented the creation, fertility and love, but were also very vengeful, cruel, jealous and proud. Because of that, Greeks viewed mermaids as the creatures that preyed on the men. They named them Sirens…”
Turns out mermaids, with their green tails, really are associated with jealousy.
For this image, that you may have seen here before, I took a nude ho scale (about 3/4″ tall) female figure and constructed a tail out of polymer clay, I then attached the mermaid with super glue to a piece of clear thread that I glued to an orange rock. I placed the rock in a glass bowl and filled the bowl with water (it had gathered some dust while sitting around). I put a few drops of blue and green food coloring in the bowl, lit the scene with 2 tea light candles and shot the image while the food coloring was still swirling together. The dust created the white specks which I think is a beautiful effect.
I’m considering experimenting with a whole underwater series. What do you think?
View posts written about jealousy and more photographs of green things here.