Tasmanian Gothic - the art of Elizabeth Barsham

What do you find when the tide goes out? Abandoned fishing nets are ubiquitous, and I've found pretty much everything in this painting on a seashore somewhere. Except the mermaid. I haven't found a mermaid. I really don't want to.

Mermaids are the ultimate Dangerous Women, luring poor randy little innocent sailor-boys to their doom or something. When I was in primary school we learnt a sea shanty that turns out to have been popular among sailors in the seventeenth century, if not earlier. It describes a Mermaid sitting on a rock “with a comb and a glass in her hand”, an image you can find in fourteenth century manuscripts, so it's been around for a long time.

Seeing what is happening to the oceans, I reckon these days she'd be angrier and a lot nastier than the most degenerate old salt could imagine. But what if she's moved with the times? What if she's traded her mirror for the modern symbol of vanity – the phone, and amuses herself taking selfies, sexting her victims and enthusiastically spreading mayhem and disinformation on social media?

Don't imagine for a moment that a twenty-first century mermaid is a cute, sanitised fishy Disney Princess. And really, really, hope you don't meet one when the tide goes out.