
Title:
“The Melting Mother”
(other strong options: “When Mountains Weep,” “Drowned Peaks,” “Mother Nature in Retreat,” “The Last Glacier Face”)
Price £600
Description:
The Melting Mother is an original mixed-media work by Laura Bernardeschi Nelson, created with oil pastels, markers, and coloured pencils on quality paper, then varnished for protection and signed on both sides. It is sold framed (45 × 35 cm), ready to hang.
This evocative piece portrays an aged, solemn face emerging from a landscape of mountains that appear to dissolve into torrents of water. The figure represents Mother Nature herself—tired, weathered, and partly submerged as glacial melt pours over her like a veil. The cascading white-blue strokes evoke the rapid thaw of mountain snow, symbolising how the planet’s oldest and most stable features are now breaking down under the force of climate change.
Her expression, marked by deep lines and shadowed eyes, conveys both resilience and sorrow. She looks outward as if witnessing her own erosion. Behind her, the once-solid mountains dissolve into dark, streaked textures—hinting at burnt forests, unstable terrain, and ecosystems under stress. Below, rising waters creep upwards, threatening to swallow what remains.
Bernardeschi Nelson transforms the landscape into a living being, merging portraiture and nature to deliver a powerful message: when the mountains melt, Mother Nature herself disappears with them. The Melting Mother is a haunting reminder of the fragility of the earth’s oldest guardians.
Characteristics:
- Artist: Laura Bernardeschi Nelson
- Title: The Melting Mother
- Medium: Oil pastels, coloured pencils, markers (mixed media) on paper
- Surface: Varnished
- Dimensions (framed): 45 × 35 cm
- Orientation: Horizontal landscape with portrait integration
- Style: Contemporary, symbolic, environmental art
- Theme: Climate change, melting mountains, rising waters, Mother Nature, ecological decline
- Signature: Signed front and back
- Condition: New, varnished, protected
- Framing: Framed, ready to hang
- Colours: Deep purples, glacier blues, earthy browns, greys
- Symbolism: Aging earth, melting glaciers, environmental sorrow, natural collapse