SUMMER 2025: Chapter1. (lets talk about mermaids)

Chapter 1 is now live, and I wanted to tell you a bit about the story behind the print.

As with all of my prints, there's a story and to be honest it never fully forms into the "story" until after the fact.  At the start its a feeling.  A spark.  And it's not really until the print is drawn and the clothes are made that I sit down to write this bit.  And then I usually go through various snippets of research material that I've collected and dig deeper into origin stories that it all clicks into place and feels like: Of course I drew it this way, because it was always about that!  And this collection is no exception.

Yesterday I told you a little bit about the Crane print, but this collection mostly circles around Mermaids.  So let's talk about Mermaids.

Cultures from all around the world have stories about mermaids and they all have a slightly different spin.  And when I was reading all these stories I was looking for the one that truly landed with me, because all these stories about mermaids seducing sailors just wasn't really hitting the mark for me.  I've always seen mermaids as capturing the essence of wildness.  Like if humans never became domesticated.  And that got me thinking, if mermaids were a divergence from our evolutionary path and actually not so different, and that, at one stage WE also held that essence of wildness that could it be reclaimed?

What if Mermaids are just women who have eaten the wildness of the world?

Wildness is the poison of a civilised society.

Green plants and salty water.

When you immerse in these things, fully, devour and be devoured by, then all the rules and requirements of the civilised world start to fall away.

I know you've felt it.

That moment that we deceptively label as "self care", that we slot in between the other supposedly more important responsibilities.  A quick swim in the ocean that has us saying: "I needed that" as we hastily run back to our busy lives.

But what if you stayed?

I read: "If we eat the wild, it begins to work inside us, altering us, changing us."

What if mermaids are just women who, with arms flung up in a release of responsibilities said: "ENOUGH!"

And rather than going back, they stayed.

They let the wildness back in.

And so with that I would like to welcome you to Summer 2025: Chapter 1.  Mermaids.

So much love,

Sophie

P.S. Quote comes from Stephen Buhner, the extended quote of which inspired this train of thought.

xx