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Title: Mermaid and the Oracle
Medium: Acrylic on Paper (Varnished)
Dimensions (framed): 30 x 40 cm
Visible Artwork: 21 x 30 cm
Signed: Front and back by artist Laura Bernardeschi Nelson
In her newest acrylic-on-paper painting, artist Laura Bernardeschi Nelson invites us into the depths of a surreal inner landscape—one that is hauntingly familiar to her dreamscape and yet entirely new to the viewer. The piece, signed both on the front and back, comes to life once framed in a 30×40 cm Knoppäng IKEA frame, revealing a visible image of 21×30 cm behind the glass. It is varnished to protect its layered textures and rich colours.
At first glance, the painting reveals the silhouette of a mermaid, poised in still reverence within the womb-like interior of a glowing cave. She is not alone. Before her stands — or grows — a mysterious figure. Is it a deity? A tree? A memory taking shape? The figure’s tendrils or limbs swirl hypnotically across the canvas, like thought patterns or ocean currents made visible. Laura leaves this ambiguity intact, allowing the viewer to engage with their own subconscious interpretations.
Rendered in deep violets, soft pinks, and velvety blacks, the color palette evokes twilight — the liminal moment between waking and dreaming. Snow-like white dots, reminiscent of stardust or seafoam, float freely across the scene, further blurring the boundary between the sea and sky, the conscious and unconscious.
Nelson’s mermaids are recurring visitors in her dream world, often inhabiting spaces of emotional or spiritual transformation. Caves, too, appear repeatedly — ancient symbols of the unknown, of the feminine, and of introspective journeys. In this way, the artwork is not merely a depiction but a symbolic map of the psyche. The mermaid may represent the artist herself or any soul in search of meaning beneath the surface of waking life.
What stands before her — tree, creature, or soul — is the mystery we all face in solitude: that unnameable presence that challenges, comforts, or calls us to go deeper.
This painting does not seek resolution. Rather, it lingers in the space of wonder, much like a remembered dream that refuses to be pinned down. It is a meditation on identity, mystery, and the enduring pull of the unconscious.
Laura Bernardeschi Nelson artworld and travels 