Maria Doni
Illustrator & visual artist
Hello — or perhaps more accurately, bună, privet, salut — depending on which corner of memory I'm pulling from today.
Growing up and moving through the shifting landscapes of Ukraine, Moldova, and Romania — places where histories overlap unevenly, languages borrow from one another without asking, and everyday resilience has its own understated grammar — quietly shaped the way I look and listen. This Eastern space, with its tangled pasts, porous borders, and persistent small human gestures amid uncertainty, still echoes in how I approach images: drawn to what's left unsaid, to contradictions that refuse tidy endings, to the quiet endurance of ordinary things.
I make images for editorial and cultural contexts — mostly poetry, essays, long-form journalism, non-fiction, picture books, and small independent presses.
I’m drawn to texts that carry many layers or say things that are hard to put into words directly.
My job is to find visual equivalents for those states, contradictions, small absurdities, or quiet human reflexes that usually stay just under the surface.
I mostly work with pen & ink: line, dot, accidental splashes. The technique lets me stay precise and loose at the same time.
Working on a picture-book concept and seeing it reach the finalists' list at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair 2026 felt like one of those moments when persistence meets recognition — deeply gratifying, and it keeps the story moving forward.
Curating a collaboration between the Illustrators Club of Romania and Editura Seneca was similarly fulfilling: bringing people and ideas together in a shared space. Along the way, contributing to Scena 9 articles, poetry volumes, cultural catalogues; teaching visual arts at Questfield International School; and leading a few workshops amid natural surroundings — each has been a process that nourished the practice in its own way. Group exhibitions across Europe added their own threads to the weave.
I keep returning to older texts on visual forms, ways language shifts across eras, and the structures that hold ideas together. When the work demands it, those threads find their way into clearer mappings: drawings that trace connections, unfold sequences, or hold overlapping layers so the eye can follow without getting lost.
The same quiet attention often turns toward plants, gardens, and the slow rhythms of living growth — whether in a series on gatherers and their cultivated patches, in reimagined meadows that become cultural hearts, or in the small, persistent details of how green things hold space and memory. These become another kind of layered text to listen to and translate: the understated ways nature persists, shelters, and quietly contradicts human haste.
The persistence comes from noticing how an image — even a small one — can sometimes halt the rush just long enough for a half-formed feeling to settle into view, or for someone to recognise, without fanfare, that the peculiar detail they caught wasn’t theirs alone.
I’m open to collaborations that feel meaningful — editorial, cultural, cross-disciplinary. If there's density in the text and a certain soul in the idea, I’d love to hear from you. Let’s see what emerges.