My journey

Welcome to my dot mandala website. My name is Nelly Ferrari. I was born in Hungary in a small town near the Austrian border. I lived there until I was 19. I went to high school and while enjoying my teenage years I was dreaming of freedom, travel and faraway lands. My free spirit wanted to see the world and so off I went. I lived in several countries such as the U.S.A, The Netherlands and England. I was lucky enough to visit many countries in different continents such as Canada, Peru, Argentina, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Spain, Italy, France, Germany just to mention a few. Visiting many different countries and towns widened my horizon and gave me a colourful picture of our beautiful world. I never thought I’d settle, I never thought I’d like one place so much that I’d stay there.

And here comes the next chapter of my life. In 2005 I decided to go to London, U.K. It was like going home because that’s where I’ve started my journey when I was 19. I love that city, I love the diversity, the busyness and that I can go to theatres, visit museums or art galleries whenever I wish. I love the old Victorian houses and walking down Southbank or going to the famous and beautiful Greenwich, not to mention Camden Town market. So there was no question whether I would stay or not. I’ve been living an amazing life in London until 2021. 

In the meantime I got married and priorities have shifted towards a more nature and community oriented lifestyle. So we decided to relocate close to the Peak District. I found in this area not only outstanding nature but also warm and welcoming people who were open towards creativity and art and I found myself in the middle of a thriving artistic community which I'm very grateful for. 

My inspiration:

Believe it or not, my inspiration comes from my day job. Yes, I love my job! I’m not sure how many people could or would say that. What is it? You might ask. I work with children. They give me so much love, joy and inspiration every day. For a long time I was satisfied with giving these back to the world, to the children I looked after, to family and friends, but after a while I wanted to express myself more. I’ve started to look for something- I didn’t know what. I’ve tried different arts and crafts such as photography, decoupaging and pyrography but I was not engaged or interested enough. Then one day I saw an amazing dot mandala and I had no idea how someone could make such beautiful painting. Immediately I’ve started looking into how to do it. I’ve watched videos and I’ve read many many websites for days. Then I decided to try it myself. From then on I was hooked. I did not need patterns, I did not need inspiration. From dots came circles, from circles came mandalas. It was such a joy to see each painting develop. I was really ecstatic and I’ve made more and more dot mandala paintings.

As I said above my main inspiration are children and working with them. Why? Once I’ve asked a 4 year old little girl what her favourite colour was. She said ‘Pink and purple and aaaall the colours in the world!’ And I thought ‘yes, I’d like to have the same enthusiasm, passion and love as this little girl has for the world surrounding her’. And here I am, expressing myself, my feelings and passion to life through my mandalas.

My mission and my vision:

I would be very grateful if my art could make your life even more beautiful. If you- getting home after a hard day’s work- sit down, would look at my dot mandala and feel relaxed, joyful and positive about life. If your guests- your family and friends- would say how lovely your home is because of the warmth of my mandala.

If I could give you these positive feelings through my art I would be the happiest person in the universe.