Painted Pebbles, Calabrian Verge

A cluster of hand-painted stones arranged at the base of a wooden post somewhere outside Catanzaro — each one lettered or flowered in house paint that the weather has already begun to crack. I set up low, almost flush with the gravel shoulder, so the stones fill the foreground and the post rises just off-centre into a white, featureless sky. The synthetic turquoise and coral of the paint read louder under this flat February overcast than they ever would in direct sun.