About

 

Some artists choose their subject. Others are chosen by it. For Denise Wong, Italy arrived like a revelation. Born and raised in Malaysia, she spent years painting the wildlife of the natural world — birds, animals, the living creatures that first taught her to truly see. Watercolour became her language early, and she spent years refining it, learning how water and pigment could capture life, movement, and light in ways no other medium quite could.

Then in 2023, something shifted. A Tuscany landscape stopped her in her tracks — the rolling hills, the cypress trees standing like sentinels against a golden sky, the wildflowers rioting across open fields — and she picked up her brush. That first painting sold. Italy had found its artist.

Since then, Denise has been quietly, passionately building a body of work that reads like a love letter to the Italian landscape. The jewel-toned waters of Lake Como. The ancient stone villages clinging to hillsides. The warm amber light of Venice's hidden canals. The cobblestone corners of Tuscan towns where a ristorante spills out onto the street and time seems to slow to a beautiful crawl.

Denise paints from Malaysia, but her heart, it seems, is somewhere between Lake Como and the canals of Venice.

But there is another world she tends to quietly — a smaller, gentler one. During the stillness of lockdown in 2021, a little squirrel named Toby found his voice, and began writing letters to his friend Charlie. Letters from Toby is Denise's illustrated letter series for children — whimsical, warm, and entirely hand-drawn — where every letter is a small adventure, and every page is a world worth stepping into.