The story behind my art
When I stepped out of the plane in New Zealand 8 years ago, I lost my heart to traveling and never got it back.
Ten countries turned into twenty, twenty turned into thirty and now I’ve made my way through almost forty countries. All my life I thought that home has to be one place. Then, I realized that you can have more than one home. In fact, home can be anywhere my suitcase is. I may not belong to a single place anymore, but it feels like living a nomadic life belongs to me.
Today I can work from everywhere and one of my favorite things to do is to experience everyday life in different countries, it’s the details that catch my attention.
Where I work
Why do I have different shops?
I license my designs to print on demand shops and they will take care of the rest and send you the final product. Whenever you buy a product, I will get a margin between 10-30% of the original price.
I have more than one shop, because they ship from different locations/countries. For you this means that depending on your location, one of these shops will have cheaper shipping costs. Also, Redbubble does not have standard size for art prints.
There is nothing like sitting in a sidewalk café, watching people passing by, soaking in the atmosphere around me, ordering a cup of coffee, drawing for hours and ending up in conversation with strangers.
This is how I create the majority of my art; as a caffeine addict sitting in a café, on a park bench at the beach or on the stairs of a museum. Basically, every place that fascinates me is a source of inspiration. This is why most of my paintings and illustrations don’t capture famous sights, but instead things that shape the character of a city, like the kiosks in Lisbon or the houses with colorful tiles. Shapes, patterns, colors… if you look closely, everything tells a story.
Traveling is the great true love of my life… I just don’t care what it puts me through. Because I adore it. Because it’s mine. Because it looks exactly like me.
― Elizabeth Gilbert
Traveling will be your teacher, whether you want it or not. It’ll question your beliefs, you’ll experience life from a million and one different perspectives and slowly, but surely, traveling will convince you to get rid of your possessions. It will start with your clothes until your wardrobe fits into one suitcase and it’ll continue with everything that was never really “you” in the first place. You’ll find yourself saying goodbye to fears and concepts of safety you held on to for too long. A lot of my illustrations are inspired by those things I’ve learned over the years and I found sometimes we all need a little reminder of what’s important whenever we feel lost. And I use art to create these reminders.
Maybe one of the most surprising things traveling taught me is that I don’t need to travel to be happy. Now that I’m quarantined at home, like nearly everyone in the world, due to Covid-19, I realized I can find joy no matter where I physically am. Yes, I still dream about traveling and I’m looking forward to hitting the road again after this whole situation has improved, but I don’t depend on it to make me happy.
I hope my drawings of different cities will take you back to that trip you did last summer or make you dream about your next adventure. Each place has its own magic, its own character and unique atmosphere that I try to capture in my paintings.
In addition I like to create art that won’t only look good on your wall, but that comes with a message; a daily reminder or something that inspires you.
Follow me & work with me
If you want to follow my travels and art adventures, you can follow me on facebook or instagram
I am also available for new commissions and licensing existing images, if you think we would be a great fit, please contact me and read more about my work as an illustrator.
