Unquiet
Things

Every May, social media fills with mermaid art as artists participate in MerMay – the month-long challenge to draw mermaids daily. I wonder if everyone’s still doing that? It’s cute, it’s popular, and it got me thinking about the mermaids and water spirits featured in my book The Art of Fantasy: A Visual Sourcebook of All That is Unreal. Because honestly, my own mermaid obsession runs embarrassingly deep.

Did you watch Darryl Hannah in Splash at a young age and dream for the next decade of diving into the ocean and magically becoming a mermaid with a sparkly orange tail? I spent hours in the pool trying to perfect the dolphin kick, convinced that with enough practice, my legs might just fuse together. When that inevitable disappointment set in, I moved operations to the bathtub with the SeaWees toys from the early 1980s—those pastel-haired creatures with their tiny combs and mirrors. I’ve been obsessed with mermaids ever since. I could have included a whole chapter on them in my book, hell, I could have written an entire volume dedicated to nothing but these aquatic enchantresses.

What is it about mermaids that makes us lose our collective minds? They’re the ultimate shapeshifters, navigating between worlds with the kind of effortless grace most of us can only dream of achieving on dry land. They embody transformation, freedom, and that eternal mystery of what’s really going on beneath the surface—which is probably far cooler than the shitshow unfolding up here on this godforsaken dirt hole.

Here are some of the fishy folk (mermaids and “mermaid-adjacent”) that were included in my book…

In this captivating image of quiet vulnerability, a mermaid combs her lustrous abundance of hair as she rests on a sprawl of seaweed-strewn rocks in an isolated cove, the shimmering strength of her tail curled beneath her. An abalone shell scattered with pearls and the tears of dead sailors beside her, she wistfully gazes into the distance, unheeding of our eyes intruding upon her moment of reflection. Or do our eyes deceive us? Is this moment of enigmatic melancholia something else entirely? Perhaps a calculated move on the siren’s part when, perceiving our gaze, she notes our hunger for magic and miracles, and in feigning unawareness of our presence, it is all the easier to lure us to our watery doom? John William Waterhouse’s (1849–1917) fascination with the darker aspects of the mermaid’s mythology as both a tragic figure and enchantress drives this work, and with it, he invites us to dive into the mystery and discover her intentions for ourselves.

French painter and illustrator Gaston Bussière (1862–1928/29) studied at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Lyon and both worked with and was greatly influenced by his contemporaries, Gustave Moreau and also the Czech painter Alphonse Mucha. His works were visual poems of Symbolist inspiration, glowing and full of vivid embellishments and often evoked the heroes and heroines of the epic mythology. He also painted many depictions of nymphs, nereids and fairies scantily dressed and showing a typical Art Nouveau ideal of beauty, such as this frolicking trio.

Edvard Munch’s (1863–1944) mermaid looks like she is desperately looking for an excuse not to show up for that thing she promised to attend, a month ago, when she was maybe feeling deceptively energetic and probably all hopped up on those tricksy endorphins after a vigorous ocean swim. Now she’s having regrets because she’s a midnight introvert and probably just wants to stay in her grotto, chill out and look at her collection of gadgets and gizmos aplenty. She definitely does not want to be where the people are. Or maybe she’s a manifestation of Munch’s preoccupation with loneliness and anxiety – in the form of a fish-woman painted by the artist as part of a commission from a Norwegian industrialist for a large-scale decorative work during an extended stay in Paris in 1896–97. Fantasy is only limited by our imaginations, and anxious people’s (and anxious mermaids’) imaginations no doubt work overtime!

Renowned Peruvian–American painter Boris Vallejo is universally considered to be one of the masters of modern fantasy illustration. His instantly recognizable, lavishly hyper-realistic-to- the-point-of-surreality paintings have appeared on the covers of numerous science fiction and fantasy fiction novels, trading cards and posters, with subjects encompassing heroes from myth and legend, fearsome prehistoric creatures and the cosmic serenity of ocean life. From epic sword-and-sorcery battles to the strange flora, fauna, and denizens of extraterrestrial landscapes, Vallejo has painted boldly fantastical visions of almost every major fantasy figure that we know and love . . . and showed us some stunning fantasies we’d never even dreamed up!

Celebrated French artist Paul Émile Chabas (1869–1937) was a member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts and a painter of nudes, portraits, and seascapes. They loved him in Europe; he first exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1890, and received a number of awards and accolades over the next several decades. Sentiments elsewhere, however, were not as flattering, and reproductions of his most (in)famous painting, depicting a lakeside scene of an unclad young woman protecting her bare skin against a cool breeze in the autumn morning sun, caused controversy and scandal in the United States. A similar painting in a literal sense – a watery scene, its subject au naturel – Chabas’ darkly luminous glimpse of a naiad idling in a crystalline cove leans more into the fantastic, but the expression on her face is pure, jaded realism. ‘Calm down,’ she seems to say, ‘it’s just a bit of skin.’

Theodor Severin Kittelsen (1857– 1914) was a Norwegian artist, one of the most popular in Norway. Famous for his illustrations of fairy tales and legends, and eerie Nordic folklore, Kittelsen’s dreamlike canvases, rendered in muted tones depicting mountaintop troll magic down to sea ghosts deep in the bogs, reveal his melancholic longing for his countryside. During a stay in Munich, the artist is noted to have opined, ‘What appeals to me are the mysterious, romantic, and magnificent aspects of our scenery . . . it is becoming clearer and clearer to me what I have to do, and I have had more ideas – but I must, I must get home, otherwise it won’t work.’

Peerless illustrator of Russian folklore, Ivan Bilibin (1876–1942) was a graphic artist and stage/costume designer who was largely influenced by Art Nouveau and whose work is commonly associated with Russian fairy tales – to the extent that we could say his work very much defines our perceptions today of what Russian folklore art looks like. Seen here is Bilibin’s depiction of a waterdwelling demonic creature found in the mythology and lore of Eastern Europe – the Vodyanoi. A bloated, cranky frog-faced old water spirit, who, when angered, breaks dams, washes down water mills and drowns people and animals – the surest way to rile the Vodyanoi is to upset the natural balance of his watery habitat. Although according to legend, he can be appeased with a knob of butter. That seems fairly relatable.

Space constraints and the permissions and whatnot meant leaving behind some treasures. Here are a handful I wish I could have included!

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