There is nothing particularly deep about this - I really was just curious about making a very dark and hard to see painting - like gunmetal grey on black - and it would be really intricate but incredibly hard to appreciate. That idea morphed into a punk mermaid with tattoos - which were a lot of fun to design in their own right. Then, I thought about how cool it would be to have her really stand out with gold leaf as just a shining outline on this really dark background. I decided to keep the original idea in the form of the capsized boat she’s sitting on, but you can see how far I wandered from the original concept. But that’s a part of the process and how most of my paintings go. Also this was one of my first experiences with gold leaf so there was definitely a big learning curve for that, which you can maybe see in how the texture of the gold leaf changes.