Oil on Linen.

86cm by 96cm by 2cm

2026

The Stone Ascendant considers the mountain as an image of permanence, scale and desire. The work centres on Campanile Basso in the Brenta Dolomites, where a singular geological form rises sharply from the surrounding landscape.

Rather than functioning as a straightforward depiction of place, the mountain becomes a point of tension between the physical and the imagined. Its verticality suggests architecture as much as geology—a structure that appears constructed, monumental and almost deliberately placed within the landscape. The work explores the psychological space created by looking towards something that exceeds human scale. The act of looking upwards becomes important: a simple physical gesture that carries associations of aspiration, distance, reverence and the sublime.

There is also a tension between the apparent permanence of stone and the instability of perception. Mountains are often understood as timeless, yet our experience of them is continually altered by light, atmosphere, distance and memory. In this sense, The Stone Ascendant is less concerned with representing the mountain itself than with the idea of the mountain as an image—something that can hold projection, memory and meaning. The work sits between landscape, abstraction and monument, using the mountain to question how we construct meaning around places that seem to exist beyond us.