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The Fragile Galaxy

Artwork by Laura Bernardeschi Nelson
Acrylics, spray paint, glitter, plastic stars on canvas – 80×60 cm

In The Fragile Galaxy, a spiral of light floats in a darkening universe — shimmering, scattered, both expanding and dissolving. At its centre, a soft white void rests like a memory slowly fading, or perhaps like something new preparing to be born. Around it, the colours shift from green to violet to dust, carrying with them the weight of time. Small plastic stars cling to the surface, bright at first glance but undeniably artificial up close, refusing to disappear no matter how long the viewer stares.

This galaxy could be ours.
Or it could be the one we leave behind.

The painting grew from a simple realisation: the Earth is ageing, and so are we.
Not in the catastrophic sense shouted by headlines, but in the quiet, familiar way that bodies age — slowly, then all at once. Forests thin like hairlines. Rivers cloud like tired eyes. Seasons lose their rhythm the way memory sometimes loosens its grip. The world mirrors us, and we mirror the world.

If climate change is the Earth’s ageing, then perhaps our personal ageing is another form of climate — internal weather shifting, storms gathering, light returning, sometimes weaker, sometimes stronger. Both processes are unstoppable, but not unshapeable. The choices we make, the care we give, the humility we learn: these things matter, even when they are small. Especially when they are small.

The plastic stars embedded in the painting shine with a stubbornness that feels almost painful. They remind us that what we create does not always return to dust with us. Some of it lingers beyond our lifespan — beauty, yes, but also waste; love, yes, but also the consequences of carelessness. We inherit a galaxy, and we craft one for those who come after.

The Fragile Galaxy asks a simple question with no simple answer:
What does it mean to grow older on a planet that is growing older with us?

Maybe ageing and climate change are not failures, but invitations — to pay attention, to honour the fragility in ourselves and the world around us, to let tenderness guide us more than fear. The galaxy in the painting is delicate, but it is still luminous. Still turning. Still capable of wonder.

Just like us.