About

Meet Ali Dunnell the artist behind Travels with my Art

I am an artist, photographer and teacher who travels the world recording images of people and life in sketchbooks, canvases and online. Never without my camera or a sketchbook and pen, I use my day-to-day experiences and travel journals as inspiration for my artwork.

Originally from England,  I have travelled extensively around the world and have had some amazing adventures visiting and living in a diverse range of countries and cultures.

Twenty years ago, after completing my art history degree at university, I set off on a gap year travelling independently around the world. My gap year evolved into a gap decade, and I spent the rest of my twenties exploring Asia, North Africa, North America, South America, Europe, Australia and Oceania as solo female traveller. To help fund my travels, I trained as a teacher, and taught overseas in Portugal, Poland, Syria, Egypt and Hong Kong as well as in England, in London, Cambridge and Nottingham.

In my early thirties I returned to England and retrained as a journalist, working on newspapers and local radio stations in Yorkshire, where I also met my husband and we had our three children. But soon the travel bug bit again, and we decided to work abroad, to give our children a taste of international life and an experience of different cultures. So, for the last seven years we have been living as an expat family, first in Sweden, then in East Africa; in Tanzania and Kenya, and now back in Stockholm.

Sketching and painting have always stayed close to my heart and I have built up a large number of sketchbooks, paintings, photo albums, USB sticks and memory cards – sometimes exhibiting and selling my work too.

I found a great way to share these images, initially with friends and family, but later with followers from all over the world, was via a blog – which was how Travels with My Art began. Travels with my Art is ultimately a gallery of my paintings, sketchbooks and photographs, but is also a mish-mash of my musings on travel, expat life, art, teaching and motherhood.

I hope my blog will give you a little spark of wanderlust.

Ali Dunnell