Melusina

In the newly refurbished Art Deco Cromer Artspace on the Prom, West Promenade, Cromer, NR27 9FA from June 12th to the 24th 2025 from 11am to 4 pm.

About the Work

Blue’s poignantly evocative water paintings invite us to look deeper. Her paintings reflect upon the impermanence of life and the forces of nature. Her new work presents a view of sea-level rise that’s grounded in the folktale Melusina. Mary’s work viscerally highlights sea-level rise. When entering the gallery you arrive along the waterline where the sea meets the land. As you progress deeper into the gallery, your perspective shifts, transfiguring to an underwater view. We have known for decades that the Earth’s climate is warming and coastal terrain around the globe are loosing ground as humankind is gambling away the prospects of a liveable future for present and future generations. Blue’s perspective is relevant, now more than ever.

“My paintings are about so much more than water. They are about the power inherent in nature, the fleetingness of life, of meaning and cultural memory. It’s about identifying possibilities and imagining something new; a better world, perhaps.”

The Tale of Melusina

In the deep blue depths you find hints of the illusive water goddess Melusina. In the darkness of the forest the young Knight could hear the splashing of the fountain long before he could see the glimmer of moonlight reflected on the still surface. He was about to step forward, longing to dip his head, drink

in the coolness, when he caught his breath at the sight of something in the dark, moving deep in the water. There was a greenish shadow in the sunken bowl of the fountain, something like a great fish, something like a drowned body. Then it moved and stood upright and he saw, frighteningly naked; a bathing woman. Her skin as she rose up, water coursing down her flanks, was even paler than the white marble bowl, her wet hair dark as a shadow.

She is Melusina, the water goddess, and she is found in hidden springs and waterfalls in any forest in Christendom, She rises from the sea in places as far away as Greece. She bathes in the Moorish fountains too. They know her by another name in the Northern places where the ice crackles as she rises. A man may love her if he keeps her secret and lets her alone when she needs solitude. She may love him in return until he breaks his word, as man always do and she sweeps him into the deep with her fishy tail, returning his faithless blood to water. The tragedy of Melusina, whatever language tells it, whatever tune dances on the melody, is that a man will always promise more than he can do, to a woman he cannot understand. At its core, Melusina’s story is about the desire to be seen and accepted for who we truly are. A journey from innocence and vulnerability to experience and resilience. What we see and feel is sometimes more real than what we consciously know. The unconscious always bubbles up from the deep.