Description
(Mixed media: Ink, Acrylic, Rice Piper, Tissue Paper, and Colored Pencil. Original is 16″x20″.)
The Virgin of Guadalupe is a beloved figure to Catholics and non-Catholics alike. She is an embodiment of the Great Mother, the Blessed Mother, She Who Hears the Cries of the World, and as such has much in common with Kwan Yin, Tara, and Yemaya.
I love Guadalupe, and I love mermaids, and at some point I was seized with the idea of putting the two together. There’s more than a bit of inspiration here from Kim Antieau’s novel Church of the Old Mermaids, in which the ancient mermaids find themselves living in the New Desert when the Old Sea dried up. There’s also something here to do with how much I have been captured by the imagery of the Southwest during the last couple of years, but how I am still a Northwest woman at heart.