"I had never really seen the Milky Way before — not without city light eating it. I sat on cold grass and stared upward for a long time. Back in my flat, I dropped salt onto wet ultramarine and let the crystals make the stars. I cried a little, doing it. I'm not sure why."
In French, atelier means a workshop — the private room where an artist makes things, where the mess is allowed to stay, where the half-finished canvases lean against the wall and no one asks when they will be done.
I never had a studio. I painted on my bedroom floor, on the kitchen table, on a fold-out desk in a university dorm room in a country I had only just arrived in. The atelier was wherever I happened to be, with whatever light was coming through the window.
Di is what my mother calls me. It is the name I hear when someone loves me without needing to say anything formal. So Atelier Di is both things at once — a serious word and a nickname. A place that sounds like a proper studio and feels like home.
I started painting at 14. I am 23 now, a qualified lawyer navigating a new life in the UK. The paintings in this space span nine years and two continents — from a teenager drawing herons by candlelight to a woman watching the Milky Way from a Scottish hillside and coming home to recreate it in salt and pigment. Every painting is a year. Every year is a room in the atelier.
This is not a gallery of finished things.
It is a record of a life still being made.
— Di
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Painting at 2am: art as a way through homesickness
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Share your work — every artist has a story worth telling
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The quiet discipline of zentangle and why lawyers make good artists
Art doesn't belong to professionals. It belongs to anyone who feels something and reaches for a way to say it. Submit your paintings, write about art that moves you, or tell your own story. Every submission is read personally by Di.
I picked up a brush at 14, not because anyone told me to — but because I had things inside me that words couldn't carry yet. I painted from my bedroom window, from my grandmother's garden, from books I had read and places I had only imagined.
At 18 I moved to the UK to study law. The painting came with me — tucked into the same bags as my textbooks and my borrowed coat. I painted through revision weeks and homesickness and the strange, luminous English light that was nothing like home and slowly became home anyway.
I am 23 now. A qualified lawyer. Still wandering this new world, still stopping when the sky does something extraordinary. Atelier Di is what I named this space — a small French word for workshop, and the nickname my mother gave me. A serious place that feels like home.
The Genius of Birds
Sunlit Courtyard
The Voyager
Color Is My Obsession
Whispers
Blossom Path
The Lantern
European Alley
Sunflower
Climbing Vine
Green Branch
Night City
Wild Raspberries
Glass Bottles
Blue Iris
Bell Peppers
Starry Night
Mandala Dragonfly
Hummingbird Garden
Evening Light
Still Water
First Snow
The Reading Room
Harbour Morning
Open Sky
Untitled (In Progress)
The night I finally saw the stars — and why I came home and cried into a painting
There is a particular kind of silence in the Scottish Highlands at 11pm in October. I had never been anywhere that dark before. I sat on the ground, tipped my head back, and the universe introduced itself properly for the first time. I thought about Atelier Di — this little unnamed thing I had been building for years in bedrooms and dorm rooms — and I understood suddenly what it was for...
What charity shop bottles taught me about English light
I was studying contract law and needed, badly, to remember why I also loved the world. Three old ink bottles on a grey windowsill changed that afternoon...
On Warli art, gossip, and the quiet power of painting what you cannot say aloud
Flat faces, terracotta backgrounds, stories told without perspective or shadow. My art teacher showed us something that day I have never forgotten...
This is not only my space. It belongs to anyone who makes things, thinks about art, or wants to share a piece of their world. Three ways to be part of it.
Share your artwork
Submit a painting, drawing, photograph, or any work you are proud of. Tell us the story behind it. Every medium welcome — from pencil sketches to oil on canvas.
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Pitch an article →Tell your story
Every artist has a journey. Share yours — when you started, what keeps you going, what you painted on the hardest day of your life. First-person, honest, yours.
Share your story →Whether you are interested in a piece, a commission, or simply want to say something — I would love to hear from you. I answer every message, usually late at night after a long day in court.
Every submission is read personally by Di. No credentials needed — just something genuine to share.
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