“I am very inspired by the landscape, organic form and particularly colour and luminosity,” Nelson said. 

“I think that is the thread that goes through my work. I am really interested in the way the light bounces back of my canvas, and I have had a long interest in finding ways to create those visual effects.”

Nelson says Australia has it’s own quality of light, but the light in Newcastle is unique. 

“It’s particularly beautiful and we grow up with that light and it imprints on us some how,” she said. 

“When I came to Newcastle I really noticed the difference between the Brisbane light. The glare of the northern light is different to Newcastle, there is more beauty here.”

Nelson, who grew up in Newcastle, lived in Brisbane for 16 years, returning in 2009. She studied art at University of Newcastle and has also studied at Brisbane Institute of Art. She has been mentored by the late Maizie Turner and now Peter Lankas. Her current body of work is inspired by an old book of botanical specimens containing seaweed she came across many years ago. 

“It had seaweeds in it collected on the Tasmanian coastline in 1889 by an unknown collector,” she said. “I went to Tasmania in January to meet with a professor of algae. I had an amazing experience where his wife was bringing out all these drawings of seaweed, but also other pressings from all over the world.”

“The patina of the aged paper, the quality of the dried specimens and I would almost like to recreate the book as a series of large painting that speak to the history of collecting,” she said. 

“And there are other angles: what’s happening to algae with climate change … collecting seaweed species was seen as a very reverent act because it was seen as very humble.”

Nelson has a studio at Newcastle Community Arts Centre, which is in the process of relocating to the Hunter Tafe Campus at Tighes Hill.