‍My story

I was born in Trieste.

If you know Trieste, you understand something essential about me already. It is one of Europe's most layered cities — beautiful and melancholic, scarred and elegant, a place where empires ended and identities blurred and the Adriatic light falls on centuries of complicated history. It is a city that holds contradictions with grace. So do I.

My father was born in a refugee camp — a child of the Italian-Croatian borderlands, displaced by the Second World War. My ancestors were Istrian and Croatian: people of the earth, literally. My great-grandfather had a forest of chestnut trees. That forest was his livelihood, his wealth, his legacy — he fed his family and his community from its roots. Long before anyone used the word regenerative, my people knew that to tend the land was to tend life itself.

On the other side of my family were naval engineers, professors, thinkers — people who built things, understood systems, asked questions, and passed knowledge on. I am the third generation of teachers in my family. It was never a career choice. It was inheritance.

And then — in one of those leaps that make a life — I left the city of my birth and went to live in jaguar territory in Brazil.

Not metaphorically. Literally. Jaguars. The purest water I have ever tasted. Air that had never been anything but itself. Powerful mountains with the faint, unmistakable presence of something older than any human story I knew. Our community was so committed to living in right relationship with that land that it won environmental prizes and is today part of a National Park. I didn't study ecology there. I breathed it. I drank it. I became it.

Perhaps that is why people call me a force of nature. It is the only world I have ever truly known.

I am also a storyteller…

I bring many stories with me — from the chestnut forests of Istria, from the refugee camp where my father was born, from the jaguar mountains of Brazil, from the canals of Venice where I learned to see colour differently, from Findhorn in Scotland where I discovered what human community can become when people truly try, from the women's circles I have sat and held, the children I have taught, the groups I have guided through transformation, and the illustrated field guides quietly doing their work in refugee settlements on the other side of the world.

I tell stories through images. Through facilitation. Through the way I hold a room. Through paint and pencil and pixel. Through the workshops I design and the circles I hold. Through the books I illustrate for children who deserve to inherit a world still full of wonder.

Every piece of art I make is a story. Every workshop I facilitate is a story being written together, in real time, by the people in the room. Every illustrated field guide that helps a family grow food in a refugee camp is a story about resilience and dignity and the unstoppable human impulse to tend the earth even in the hardest of circumstances.

This is what I do. This is who I am.

The Journey — From There to Here

Trieste → Brazil → Venice → Scotland → Australia

From the layered history of Trieste, I carried the values my family gave me: rootedness, intellectual curiosity, a love of teaching, and the knowledge that land is not just where you live — it is who you are.

In Brazil, growing up in a nature reserve in jaguar territory, I learned that ecology is not a subject. It is a way of being alive. The community I was part of proved that humans can choose to live differently — in genuine partnership with the living world.

In Venice, I graduated from the Tiziano Painting School in 2006, specialising in Anthroposophic watercolours — a tradition that understands art not as decoration but as a path toward deeper truth. It was here that illustration became my primary language.

In training as a Waldorf educator, I found the pedagogical home that made sense of everything I already knew: that children learn through beauty, through story, through the imagination. That art is not a subject but a language. That wonder is not a luxury — it is a necessity.

At Findhorn — the internationally celebrated intentional community in Scotland, one of the world's great experiments in conscious living — I lived and worked for many years, deepening into Permaculture, Ecovillage Design, facilitation, group process, and the full ecosystem of regenerative culture. I trained with some of the most extraordinary minds and hearts in this movement: Joanna Macy, John Croft, Julia Butterfly Hill, Polly Higgins, even Patch Adams!

And now — Australia. Where I continue to make art, tell stories, facilitate groups, coach women, and contribute my particular, peculiar, hard-won force-of-nature energy to a world that needs it.

What I Do

I work across three interwoven practices — because I have never been able to choose just one, and I have stopped pretending I should.

Illustration Children's books, food illustration, humanitarian field guides, editorial art, infographics and process illustration. Commissioned by Re-Alliance for field guides used in refugee settlements worldwide. Illustrator of Tabhka, a collaborative recipe book. Illustrator of a forthcoming children's book. Working digitally and with traditional media — always with warmth, clarity, and a deep love of the natural world.

[See my illustration work →]

Facilitation & Workshops Workshop design and delivery, group process facilitation, community development, conflict resolution, circle holding, and regenerative culture programmes — for ecovillages, women's groups, children, and organisations working for change. Thirteen years of immersive training, mostly at the Findhorn Foundation. Rooted in Process Oriented Psychology, Dragon Dreaming, The Work That Reconnects, Active Hope, Deep Ecology, and much more.

[See my facilitation work →]

Creativity Coaching for Women Bespoke programmes to help women reconnect with their creative voice, reclaim their expressive life, and step more fully into who they are and what they are here to make.

[Join the waiting list →]

What I Believe

Roots matter. Where we come from — the land, the ancestors, the stories — shapes everything we make and do. I carry mine consciously and with gratitude.

Beauty is not optional. In art, in community, in how we treat the earth — beauty is not a luxury. It is a signal that something is alive and well.

Wonder is a practice. The capacity for wonder — in a child, in an adult, in a room full of people — is one of the most powerful forces for change we have. I try to cultivate it in everything I make and hold.

Art is social technology. Illustration, creativity, and play are not decoration. They are tools for learning, healing, and transformation. I've seen it in refugee settlements. I've seen it in women's circles. I've seen it in children's eyes in jaguar territory on the other side of the world.

The personal is planetary. How we are with ourselves shapes how we are with each other, which shapes how we are with the earth. The chestnut forest. The refugee camp. The jaguar mountains. The illustrated field guide. It all connects always.

A Note on Being a Storyteller

I believe that everyone carries stories worth telling — stories of land, of lineage, of transformation, of the quiet moments that change everything.

Mine have taken me from the borderlands of Europe to the mountains of Brazil, from the canals of Venice to the Scottish highlands, from the edges of the world's worst crises to the most intimate circles of women finding their way home to themselves.

I bring all of it into my work. Every illustration. Every workshop. Every coaching session. Every page.

If you are drawn to this — to working with someone who will bring their whole self, their whole story, and their whole force-of-nature energy to whatever we make together — then I think we are going to get along very well.

[Get in touch →]

Credentials at a Glance

Illustration & Art

• 20+ years as a working artist and illustrator

• Graduate, Tiziano Painting School, Venice — Anthroposophic watercolours, 2006

• Commissioned by Re-Alliance for humanitarian field guides used in refugee settlements worldwide

• Illustrator, Tabhka collaborative recipe book (20 illustrators involved)

• Illustrator, forthcoming children's book

Education & Facilitation

• Third-generation teacher

• Trained Waldorf / Steiner educator

• Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC)

• Ecovillage Design Education (EDE) — Trainer for Trainers, Gaia Education / UNDESD

• Process Oriented Psychology modules (Process Work) — conflict resolution, deep democracy, world work, leadership

• Active Hope Facilitation — Joanna Macy & Chris Johnstone

• The Work That Reconnects — Joanna Macy

• Dragon Dreaming Methodology — John Croft, Gaia Foundation

• Be the Change Symposium Trainer — The Pachamama Alliance

• European Game Master, Play the Call

• LEAP — Living Education Apprenticeship Program, Findhorn Foundation

• 13+ years of training and practice at the Findhorn Foundation, Scotland

Origin

• Born in Trieste, Italy

• Raised in a nature reserve in Brazil (today part of a National Park)

• Ancestral roots in Istria and Croatia

"I am a force of nature. And I come with a lot of stories."