Working on a Series with Lisa Call
I'm revisiting an early small piece, and several large textile paintings, all with mermaids, as the central idea to explore in Lisa's online course.
Since I love to do this kind of image research, I've been trolling around and found some interesting historical information about mermaids, both in European traditions and in Mexican folk art. Here' info from a research paper in Southwest Folklore:
The Mermaid in Mexican Folk Creches
Erika Esau and George A. Boeck, Jr.
SOUTHWEST FOLKLORE Volume 5, Number 1 Winter 1981
"The mermaid as a European concept may have had its origins in the Babylonian god Oannes, who is represented with a flowing beard and a fish's tail -- later as the Triton of Greek mythology. In an act of synthetic interpolation, this imaginary form was combined with another popular classical source: the siren, that creature originally portrayed as a half-woman and half-bird and who represented the souls of the unhappy dead. Their association with sailors and the sea stems from the fact that the sirens' singing was said to have seduced Greek sailors to drive their ships onto the rocks. A a very early date, seamen incorporated the powerful figure of the siren into their mythology. In this context, it is easy to understand the combination of the siren's attributes with the more appropriate form of woman-fish; the Spanish la sirena and the French la siréne, both referring to mermaid, attest to this transition."...
"Given this "hybridization process,"as Dr. Atl an artist and historian, describes it, one can assume that the mermaid figure was adapted by Indians who had at some time seen representations of her in Spanish sources; as Keleman states, "The leaf-sprite and the mermaid. . . may have entered the New World on maps and the title pages of books, where they are commonly found."19 The image began to appear in popular art as well as in colonial buildings and sculpture."...
"Among the Aztec deities, Chalchiutlicue was the wife of Tlaloc, the god of rain and moisture. The name means "Lady of the Emerald Robe," an allusion to the element over which she presided. She is associated with both fresh and salt water, having ruled earth during the fourth age of man, which ended in a flood, causing men to become fish; she was consequently considered to be the goddess of water sellers, fishermen, and sea-farers. Further, Madsen describes Chalchiutlicue as causing tempests and whirlwinds that resulted in the drowning of boatmen.Such associations support the comparison with the mermaid in the European tradition, since she was seen as an equivalent "goddess" of the waters.
"As for the mermaid-figure's presence at the birth of Christ, the association with Chalchuitlicue is even more convincing. The goddess was considered the Virgin Mother of the minor gods of the heavens as well as of Huizilpochtli--the god of sun, war, and one of the Aztec triumvirate. This link with Christian concepts is extended by Chalchiutlicue's connection with the "green skirt" or "jewel water" which denotes the "precious water of mortification" drawn from the Penitent worshiper and containing the "life substance" or "life blood.""