By shop co-owner Michael F. DuBois, Because I Am A Mermaid is an original poem about the strong, brilliant, ocean-loving women who help shape our world. Inspired by the artist's late-mother who considered herself a "mermaid on land" this piece calls to those who have seen joy and heartache, witnessed passion and pain, and who find their true selves in the wild, wild sea.

All online orders donate 6% of profits to mental health organizations in an effort to help build a more peaceful world.

This print has been designed, hand-painted with watercolor, scanned, digitally cleaned, and printed on archival-grade luster photo paper.

Frame not included.

"Why do you visit the shore so often? Because I am a mermaid. You lived out there in the wild sea? I did, it’s where I learned to swim. The storms, they taught me courage and the calm it showed me joy. And the bottom? The very bottom, deep, deep down underneath? Oh yes, I’ve been there too. So far, sometimes, I thought I’d never see the sun again. But that’s the sweet thing about darkness — it helps you find your own light. Sadness then, is there sadness out there? Or can you swim from it like you can’t here on land? No one can hide from their sadness, no matter how fast they move. But the ocean taught me to welcome it and I now love it like an old friend. It only ever visits to remind me how wide and how vast I’ve loved. How about beauty — the kind that stirs in your chest and makes you feel alive? Can that be found out there too? Oh, that exact kind, yes. And once you’ve been to the bottom and learned to befriend your own grief the beauty seems to show its face in nearly everything you see. So then why, with all that it’s given you, with freedom and clarity and thankfulness and bliss, would you leave and live here on land? Because, as anyone who’s ventured out far enough knows, once you find peace in the ocean you’ll want to make the world a little more like the sea. Will you ever return then? Back out to your home? Someday I will, I’m sure of it, when I’m finished sharing what I can. But until then I’ll visit the shore. Because you are a mermaid? Yes, because I am a mermaid.”

Because I Am A Mermaid (STORMY)