Hi everybody!
It’s been an incredibly long time since my last post… a lot has happened this year that has kept me away from my photography, my hiking journeys, this blog and my social accounts, but I’m finally back and I have some exciting news.
First, let me briefly explain that the main reason for my long absence is that the third-party platform that was hosting my website managed somehow to erase most of my content, including all my pictures and the posts of this blog. All at once I’ve seen years of work swept away. I was completely devastated. The amount of time and labour needed to re-upload all the missing parts was so huge that we have eventually decided to re-build the website from scratch, making it completely ours this time and I am extremely grateful to my nerd, genius husband for this!
It has been a long and difficult year with a lot of technical, desk work only and very few opportunities to be outdoors, drawing, shooting video or taking pictures, so it feels really great to be back in business, and like a phoenix reborn from the ashes I am now ready for new adventures and artistic projects.
Einstein once said: “In the middle of every difficulty lies opportunity”. In fact, I have learnt a lot during this time of struggles and the new website has so many new functionalities that it has allowed me to do things that I couldn’t even imagine before.
And here comes the first news: My shop is now officially open on this website with many of my pictures and illustrations inspired by nature finally available as prints on different supports! But I will tell you more later on this post.
The second news is that from now on my illustrations will accompany my pictures in telling the nature’s tale that I am so lucky to witness during my life in the Swedish wilderness and my hiking tours.
It will probably sound as a surprise, especially to my Instagram and Facebook friends, since on both accounts I’ve always only posted my photos. Truth is that I have been drawing all my life, I just never shared my illustrations on those platforms before.
Now that my shop is online and many of my fine art prints come from my nature illustrations, it is time for them to be shared too.
Photography and illustrations are two creative processes that coexist in my daily artistic activity, they complement each other and I could’t really do without either of them.
Photography to me is a more immediate way to capture nature, I see, I feel, I compose, I shoot. It involves the excitement of being outdoors, my love for wildlife and my passion for hiking and exploring the wilderness.
Drawing is a slower pace creative process that involves a different kind of imagination, my love for art and botany, my passion for details, my prolific dreaming activity and so much more. Besides, it allows me to be in nature even when I cannot be outdoor which is the most important thing to me anyway.
Back to my shop… It is such an amazing feeling to see my artworks turn into physical beings!
Some of my nature pictures and illustrations are now available as poster and greeting cards printed on high quality paper, some others have turned to designs that are printed on soft and comfy t-shirts. But this is just the beginning… there is still a lot of work to be done on the website, I have plenty of new ideas and projects just waiting to come to life, and new products are in the making.
By the way, most of my work takes time, like the time of a journey and back to take and edit my pictures or the time to hand draw my illustrations, so you will not see tons of new products added to the shop every week. In a world of cheap and fast, I believe in quality and originality, things that require time, and I really aim to offer products that hopefully mean something to someone as well as I believe in supporting the activity of other artists and artisans. At the same time, I’m doing my best to offer you affordable prices.
You can check out my shop here, I really hope you will enjoy it and it would be great to hear what you think about it! You can leave me your precious feedback on my Instagram/Facebook account or by writing to contact@simonadauria.com that you can also use if you have any questions of course. Finally, you can share this post using the icons on top of it. Your support is of immense importance to me!
For now, I thank you very much for reading and I wish you all the best for the new year! May peace, love, luck and joy be with you all.
Simona ❤️
