“Fairy Tails” – Love,Mermaids & Progression

Back in the fall of 2010 I started messing around with some Mermaid sketches as a way to combine my love of female figure with my love of the ocean and nature. I had come up with some ideas but it needed time to brew before it was ready to commit some hefty time and thought to it.

We had decided to move to Florida for the winter and thankfully escaped one of the most brutal snow seasons ever. After a fall/winter national art tour and a exhibiting at the Surf Expo in January, it was time to get to work.

This piece became my mission while I was at my home away from home in Saint Augustine Beach. It was really nice being away having time to put all of my creative energy towards this painting.

The concept I had at first was all about sexiness, lust and beauty. After days of sketching and revisions though, the painting took on a mission of it’s own. With each new painting session it seemed to take a new direction unfolding into what seemed like a painting that would never end.

During the months I spent in the Sunshine State I got really enthralled with world events and did a lot of reading up on interconnections between science,mathematics & art. I redirected the focus of this painting towards love, progressive thinking, spiritual connectivity and much needed social and religious paradigm shifts.

This became one of the more challenging paintings that I’ve worked on in a long time.  Not so much purely for technical reasons, but complex decision making consumed me.  The color palette, the lighting of the scene, the perspective & composition changed more times than I can recall. My soulful artistic journey kept revealing more and more potentiality that I couldn’t ignore.

The symbolism and representational elements in this piece will I hope reveal themselves for those who spend time looking at the original or a larger print. But if not, I think it works at face value alone and that’s ok too.  Art allows the viewer to connect their own meanings and that’s a beautiful relationship to draw inspiration from.

If you’d like to pick up a print of ‘Fairy Tails’ you can do so here: http://shop.jayalders.com. Thank you for the support.