Underwater Metropolis Art by Laura Bernardeschi Nelson

for sale on https://www.saatchiart.com/en-gb/art/Painting-What-Remains-After-the-Flood-by-Laura-Bernardeschi-Nelson

What Remains After the Flood

Artist: Laura Bernardeschi Nelson

Medium: Acrylics, oil pastels, spray paint, beach sand, reclaimed plastic, wood, hot glue, and real dried seaweed on canvas

Dimensions: 100 × 100 cm

Year: 2025

Varnished: Yes

Signed: Front and back

Framing: Unframed

Collection: Climate Change Collection

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What Remains After the Flood is the newest mixed-media work by artist Laura Bernardeschi Nelson, a piece that emerges from her deep concern for climate change and its accelerating impact on the world’s oceans. The artwork envisions a city submerged beneath rising waters, its architecture dissolving into silence as ancient sea creatures drift through the ruins.

Materials as Evidence, Not Ornament

Bernardeschi Nelson constructed the piece on a 100 × 100 cm canvas using acrylics, oil pastels, spray paint, real beach sand, dried seaweed, reclaimed plastic, and fragments of wood—materials she gathered from coastal walks. These found objects are integrated using hot glue, creating sculptural textures that rise from the surface.

Rather than functioning as decorative elements, these materials serve as physical evidence of pollution’s ongoing impact. Each shard, grain, and fragment becomes part of the narrative, blurring the boundary between artwork and environmental testimony.

In the painting, translucent “fishbellies”—early ancestral life forms—glide through the drowned cityscape. Their ethereal movement contrasts with the rigid geometry of the buildings, reinforcing the unsettling idea that these creatures existed long before humans and may outlast us if current ecological trends continue.

Climate Change as Creative Imperative

Climate change is not a distant concept for Bernardeschi Nelson. It is something she encounters directly in the natural debris scattered along the shoreline—plastic trapped in seaweed, broken fishing remnants, weathered wood. These traces of human neglect have increasingly influenced her practice, pushing her toward work that blurs fine art with ecological commentary.

Her art serves as both witness and warning. By embedding ocean waste into her paintings, she transforms discarded materials into symbols of environmental urgency.

Part of the Climate Change Collection

What Remains After the Flood belongs to Bernardeschi Nelson’s expanding Climate Change Collection, a series that examines rising sea levels, extinction, degradation, and the fragile relationship between humans and the planet. Each piece weaves natural textures with synthetic debris, encouraging viewers to reflect on what is lost and what may still be saved.

Rather than presenting climate issues through data or statistics, her work invites emotional engagement. It asks viewers to sit with questions such as:

• What will survive us?
• How will rising seas reshape our future landscapes?
• What remains after destruction—and who will be there to witness it?

A Visual Call to Action

Though the artwork is varnished, signed, and available through Saatchi Art, its value extends beyond the marketplace. It forms part of a wider cultural conversation about environmental responsibility and the consequences of inaction.

Bernardeschi Nelson’s commitment to climate-focused art reflects her belief that artists help shape how society imagines the future. Through layered colour, texture, and symbolism, she communicates what headlines and data cannot: the emotional truth of a planet in crisis.

What Remains After the Flood stands as both a caution and a plea—an image of what we risk losing and a reminder of what might still endure.