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Title: Where the Tide Hides Her Name
Artist: Laura Bernardeschi Nelson
Medium: Acrylics and Oil Pastels on Canvas | 40 x 50 cm
There are coasts where cliffs remember.
In Where the Tide Hides Her Name, a lone boat cuts through the pale green sea under skies brushed with cloud. It sails toward the horizon with a red flag fluttering, leaving behind the familiar, crossing into myth. Below, half-glimpsed in the tide, a mermaid rises—not fully, only her tail, curved like a question mark. She could be surfacing, or she could be slipping away. She could be memory.
And on either side: wild, green cliffs that seem to lean in as if listening. One blooms with red flowers like whispered words. The other trickles with a white-flecked waterfall, tumbling into the place where stories wait to surface.
“She watches the boat with the calm of tides,
Knowing it will not find what it seeks.
The sea holds secrets in her hands
And keeps them where no map can reach.”
The colors in this painting speak in layers—oceanic turquoise and deep sky blue, pierced with shadow and kissed by floral bursts. Acrylics form the structural emotion of the piece, while oil pastels add softness and movement, letting the sea feel alive. It’s both a scene and a threshold—between land and water, fact and tale, seen and guessed.
The mermaid is not the focus, and yet, she holds the weight of the scene. She is the watcher, the keeper of tides. Perhaps she is the one the sailor seeks—or the part of himself he left behind.
This painting is part of an ongoing exploration of coastal mythologies and feminine presence in unseen spaces. Created shortly after a walk along the cliff paths of Northumberland, where the sea feels eternal and close, this piece came from silence first—then sound, then memory.
Artist’s Note
Sometimes I don’t paint a story—I paint the after of a story. This one is what’s left when the words are gone. A boat. A sea. Something’s watching. Something remembered.
Thanks for reading
Laura Bernardeschi Nelson artworld and travels 