The Secret Gallery
Art often begins in unexpected places. For me, it began not in a studio with brushes and paints but in the quiet struggle of a back garden — a garden overlooked by neighbours far too interested in my life and far too careless with their own.
At first, all I wanted was a little privacy. I stretched camouflage netting between the battered fir trees, a humble screen against prying eyes. Yet what began as necessity soon blossomed into something else. Day by day, I realised I was no longer merely hiding — I was creating.
The fir trees, poor things, had been cruelly hacked and left wounded by my neighbours’ heavy-handed cutting. But I refused to let them die. With water, care, and sheer determination, I nursed them back. I cut away the old, brittle branches one by one, scratching and bruising my hands and arms in the process. It was painful work, but also strangely cathartic. I didn’t want a garden of ghosts — dead wood hanging lifeless as a makeshift wall. I wanted trees that lived and breathed, partners in my art.
Now those same branches and leaves have become part of something new: my first outdoor installation.
It grows each day, as I add whatever curious objects come my way. An old vase, given new character with rope. A scatter of CDs, shimmering briefly when the sun finds them. My worn bath curtain, reborn as a backdrop and a veil of privacy. And always, the camouflage net — twisting itself into shapes among the trees, a silent collaborator in my work.
This installation has become an obsession of sorts. I can no longer look at any discarded object without wondering how it might be reborn here, in this living gallery. The garden has become both sanctuary and stage, where nature and art entwine: branches and paintings, dried flowers and fabric, decay and renewal.
It is also, in its own way, a quiet protest. My neighbours may continue to suffocate their poor olive and cypress trees in narrow pots, starved of water and life. But here, in my garden, trees are nourished, objects are transformed, and privacy is woven not from fences or barriers but from creativity itself.
What began as defence has become delight. What started with a net has grown into a world. And perhaps, in the end, the most enchanting answer to unwanted curiosity is not bitterness, but beauty.
— Laura Bernardeschi Nelson artist
Laura Bernardeschi Nelson artworld and travels 