This miniature painting was inspired by alchemical illustrations and folk lore regarding The Lady of Lusignan.. The surface is built up with a method similar to the "palimpsest" which occurs in illuminated manuscripts and Indian minatures. Delicate ink drawings in intricate detail are juxtaposed with many thin layers of oil glaze, vintage paper, and gold leaf. This makes it's depth and richness difficult to photograph. The surface is more translucent and three dimensional than is apparent in the pictures.

Though she is most often thought of as a mermaid or siren, the fairy Melusine has a double serpent or dragons' tail. Much like the Leanan Sidhe, she is a dark faery muse who bears her gift of inspiration with the price of sorrow. In the medieval French version of the tale, she marries the count Raymond of Lusignan and bears him many children, all of them changelings with some part of them resembling an animal and unusually talented in a particular craft.

The fairy Melusine became a heraldic symbol of the House of Lusignan, which had once dominated Cyprus and the French provence of Poitou. In legend she is a fairy woman or water spirit who became the Lady of Lusignan and a muse of architectural construction. In German heraldry, a Melusine is a double-tailed mermaid. The double-tailed version was also depicted emblematically as Sirena, for the Saint Clair (or "Maere") family.