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My initial concept for this painting was to create a “floating
room” as if it had just drifted onto the sand at the edge of the water. I have
always loved the image/idea of mermaids and all the mythology and folklore that
go along with them. I have done several other paintings with them, including
the painting “Water Music” in which a mermaid is sleeping in a chair listening
to a pianist. While I was working on that painting I did a drawing in which the
mermaid was stretched out on the top of the piano and the shape of her body and
tail and the long shape of the grand piano just seemed to fit together like the
pieces to a puzzle. In composing
this painting I became intrigued by how the shape of the back of the mermaid
also reflected the rhythm of the dunes in the landscape behind her. The title comes from a quote I read from
a filmmaker in which he said “life
can both be explained in the same way someone might explain the “attraction of
fishing”. I interpret this as our desire to go forward in life is motivated by
not really knowing exactly what we might catch if we keep casting our line. In the painting there is a fisherman in
a rowboat, fishing with his dog. There is an interchange of dreams here. It is
possible that the fisherman is daydreaming that he may catch a mermaid, and the
pianist is dreaming about fishing as he plays, and thus the mermaid has
materialized on his piano. The dogs in the painting are not dreaming, but
instead they are enjoying the simple bliss of a comfortable chair and the
pleasure of being out in a boat in the water, unencumbered by the more complex
dreams and desires of their human companions. The heron in the foreground with the fish is frozen in the
moment, one foot in the “real” world and one foot in the dream world of the “floating
room”. The painting is 30" x 42" oil on linen.
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