https://www.artpal.com/laurabernnelson/
Title: Whispers Among the Lavender
Medium: Oil pastels on paper, applied with palette knife and direct manipulation
Size: ~20 x 30 cm | Framed: 40 x 30 cm
Varnished for protection and depth
Laura Bernardeschi Nelson’s Whispers Among the Lavender explores the boundary between impression and memory, landscape and self. Through the thick, tactile application of oil pastels—sometimes with a palette knife, sometimes worked by hand—the piece becomes a meditation on process and presence.
Technically, the piece is built in layers. The background is a field of soft violets and muted lavenders, created by blending dry pastel pigments directly on the paper’s surface. Bold, expressive palette knife strokes add texture and energy, especially in the floral explosions of pink, chartreuse, and navy. These bursts mimic petals or fleeting sensations—suggesting the mind’s inability to hold a full memory, only fragments.
The central figure is deliberately ambiguous: she could be a gardener, a child, or a spirit of the place. Her hat shields her identity, her position turned away. She is an anchor, but not a protagonist. Her tools—a basket and a trowel—suggest care and cultivation, even as the wildness of the scene resists control. She is a part of the field, not its master.
Philosophically, the work grapples with the theme of quiet stewardship—how we tend not only to gardens but to our inner lives. The lavender field is not just a place but a state of mind. The composition’s gentle movement from left to right, with diagonal light shafts drawing the eye upward, evokes a spiritual unfolding. It’s as though something is being gathered—perhaps not flowers, but moments, lessons, and fragments of memory.
The figure is neither fully formed nor detailed, resisting the viewer’s urge to “know” her. Instead, she remains a symbol of care, solitude, femininity, and mystery. Her muted presence offers a mirror to the viewer—who, like her, is always in the act of collecting, planting, and letting go.
Laura Bernardeschi Nelson artworld and travels 