One of my earliest childhood memories was of my first day at school in London and feeling isolated and frightened. I later learned that I did not speak a word of English and it was apparently during this time that I started making things, drawing and painting. My art was a safe place where there was comfort in a language with no words.

 As a female artist and daughter of old fashioned Italian immigrants, I was not encouraged to pursue a career and my art studies in Italy ended abruptly because of family circumstances. However, recently I have been encouraged to find and evaluate my female voice. In my latest works I have been exploring  symbols to tell stories about female experiences, identity and connections. I had a formidable Italian great-grandmother, a great inspiration, who would tend to her farm animals and crochet in the evening so as to make a living. Her husband died in the early part of WW1 and she raised -as a single mum- her own family as well as my father and aunt. Unjustly, she was not allowed to participate in the local mayor’s meetings despite being a major donor.

I love being in woods and am fascinated by how trees communicate with each other by using their roots. This relates to the human experience of passing knowledge without being seen openly. I am also spellbound by a tree’s ability to adjust its roots to hold it in place and dance over all kinds of difficult terrain. We speak of ‘family roots’, ‘being rooted’ and ‘finding our roots’ so these ideas have been around forever and are deeply connected to identity, myth and symbolism.

I still maintain close connections with the Italian alps and like to paint en-plein-air during the Summer. Immersed in the silence of the magical woods, I feel in the ‘Moment’ where a truer belonging exists. Painting trees, forests and flowing water can be as intimate as painting a portrait. It communicates the endless need to adapt and the uniqueness of each response to circumstances. There is so much to be learnt from direct observation over a period of time and this exploring search can feel like a meditative process.

I hope to enliven curiosity and questioning with my work and to pass on some of the magic and sense of participation that I experience during the process of painting.