https://www.saatchiart.com/en-gb/studio/art/12717041/overview
This painting by Laura Bernardeschi Nelson bursts with spiritual force and luminous energy. Using acrylics on hardboard, she transforms a tranquil scene—a wooden pier stretching into calm waters—into a cosmic moment of illumination. The viewer is no longer just observing a landscape, but witnessing a threshold: a place where light pierces through existence and the ordinary becomes transcendent.
Technically, the piece showcases Nelson’s ability to convey movement and emotion through bold yet delicate handling of color and light. The sun is not simply depicted—it erupts, sending rays of green, gold, and red across the sky, mingling with clouds rendered in ethereal wisps and shadowy masses. These explosive rays are applied with confident, almost ecstatic strokes, radiating outward like divine breath, breaking through the cloud cover with urgency and power.
The use of acrylics enhances the painting’s vitality: the pigment retains its brightness and vibrancy, allowing the greens and yellows of the sunburst to slice vividly through the cool blues of the sky and water. The hardboard base adds a sense of firmness and grounding, contrasting beautifully with the ephemeral quality of the light.
The pier in the foreground, painted in dark, weathered tones, feels rooted and aged, offering a human-made anchor amid the swirling energy of the natural world. Its linear perspective draws the viewer’s gaze inward, as if beckoning us to walk toward the light—not just literally, but metaphorically.
Philosophically, this artwork can be seen as a metaphor for revelation. The pier represents life’s journey—structured, linear, finite. Yet beyond it lies something immeasurable and divine: the breaking open of the sky, the sudden realisation, the moment when understanding floods in. It’s a reminder that beneath what we think is solid and predictable lies something larger, wild and full of grace.
There is also an underlying existential harmony here: the interplay between darkness and brilliance, shadow and blaze. Laura Bernardeschi Nelson captures the moment of becoming—when day breaks not just upon the land but within the self. It is not simply a sunrise but an awakening of being.
Laura Bernardeschi Nelson artworld and travels 