https://www.saatchiart.com/en-gb/studio/art/12703973/overview
Title: Portal to the Quiet Realm (2025)
Artist: Laura Bernardeschi Nelson
Medium: Acrylic on canvas
Dimensions: 80x60x2 cm
Signed: Front and reverse
Portal to the Quiet Realm showcases Laura Bernardeschi Nelson’s mastery of layered acrylic techniques, with a luminous, dreamlike scene built through deliberate texturing, blending, and gestural mark-making. The composition is alive with dynamic diagonals and circular forms, guiding the eye through a mystical garden or forest, where light and colour ripple across the canvas.
Nelson employs an ethereal palette—lavender, viridian, cobalt blue, and soft whites—contrasted against darker, grounding hues. Highlights and glows are achieved through semi-transparent layers, brushed and scumbled to suggest rays of light, mist, and reflection. The central circular motif—possibly a mirror, portal, or water surface—creates a powerful visual and symbolic focal point. Its form is soft, almost vibrating, merging with the surrounding flora and streams of light.
Floral forms bloom gently in the foreground, while upward strokes and sweeping arcs lend a celestial, transcendent quality. There is a strong sense of movement and flow, as though the entire scene is being illuminated by both moonlight and inner vision.
This painting is not merely a landscape—it is an invitation to step through. The circular form in the centre becomes a threshold: a symbolic gateway between the external world and the inner sanctuary. Here, Laura Bernardeschi Nelson envisions a realm untouched by noise, fear, or superficiality—a realm governed by beauty, harmony, and renewal.
The light cascading across the scene suggests awareness, awakening, or even divine insight. The lush vegetation, glowing flowers, and curved shapes echo the cyclical nature of life and the peace that can be found when we embrace stillness and openness. This is a deeply meditative work, where nature is not only observed but entered spiritually—an extension of the self’s longing to reconnect with something sacred and eternal.
Through Portal to the Quiet Realm, Nelson continues her artistic exploration of nature as refuge .
Laura Bernardeschi Nelson artworld and travels 