About

Some people discover their passions later in life, but others are born with them woven into who they are. Daniela belongs to the second group. Brazilian and Italian by heritage and American in soul, she grew up with a truth everyone around her knew. Her world revolved around horses. Childhood friends remember it clearly, because she spoke of little else. Horses were never a hobby for her, they were a compass.

She began riding at thirteen on her aunt’s farm. Soon after, instinct made room for structure as she started formal equestrian lessons. By fifteen, that love spilled onto paper, and she began sketching horses with a devotion her hands could barely keep up with. Those early hand drawn pieces, fragile and sincere, remain as fragments of the girl she once was.

Although she dreamed of becoming a veterinarian, life opened a different corridor, one lined with law books instead of stables. It was a path shaped more by destiny than desire. Still, art tugged at her quietly and persistently. She played the flute, she drew, she searched. Eventually, she found the camera. She photographed weddings, newborns, birthdays, architecture and moments suspended in time. Yet a part of her still longed to return to the beginning.

That return happened in the United States. Daniela had always felt a connection to this country, as if an invisible thread tied her spirit to it. Those who know her often say she should have been born here. Moving to Wellington, the winter equestrian capital of the world, was not an accident. It was a homecoming. Surrounded by the rhythm of horses, she climbed back into the saddle, and something inside her opened.

With that, the art returned too, this time not as a job but as a calling.

Today, she stands exactly where her younger self hoped she would be. Camera in hand, a horse at her side, the two passions that shaped her finally reunited. She is a wife, and the mother of her beautiful Valentina, who fills her life with purpose and joy.

This website begins at the crossroads of all the paths that led her here. The first images will come from the past so that others can walk this journey with her. Soon, new work will appear. And in every photograph of a horse, Daniela leaves a small piece of her heart.