If that’s the magic opal Adriatic on the right, we must be looking north, towards Sant’Erasmo. Another strawberry is asserting its political intention. The lightweight and low-cut trainer (originally designed for elite handball players) has circled around over the city and is now flying out into the gulf towards a sfogliatella cosmic object. Two apples sit where the path turns down to the Spiaggia di San Nicoletto. The looming morel mirage is on the inshore side because the mushroom-rich Cansiglio Forest sits inland, on the hilly limit of the Veneto region. The sky is not a platform, John has perceived.

The fingers of the waves reach for the strip of beach, nails foaming as they drag back. We must now be facing south, towards Pellestrina. The filter is pushed to 100; the sky opens and thought ruptures into a bokeh burst, a flurry of lens flare and ozone. The frame is burning through, bubbling and melting into a saturated retinal bouquet of light glitches, filigree, murrine, alum and tin mordants.

Rosso rubino seduces through tiny particles of gold suspended within the molten glass. The hue is not a pigment, but a physical effect produced by the scattering of light from nanoparticles, a phenomenon of optical interaction not chemical coloration. Select is fruitier than Campari; the latter sits at the drier, more austere end of bittersweet, while Aperol leans in bright and eager. A vitreous furnace of crimson, once extracted from insects, once worn in ecclesiastical vestments. John chooses Campari.

The sky splits, smoke and sugar fill the sinuses. Choreographed peonies and chrysanthemums, willows and palms arrive in sequenced delay – each a particulate combustion above Giudecca. The air screams, crackles, and rushes, the canvas congeals with ceremonial residues, dry and metallic, drifting over dark and aqueous.

Making his way back from the studio in the dark once more, the painter is walking the length of the Fondamenta delle Zattere, crossing Ponte de Ca’ Balà (in honour of salt cod), passing Spirito Santo, over Ponte dei Incurabili (in memory of the untreatable), Ponte de la Calcina (after quicklime), turning away from the slapping water, cutting through the sotoportego and joining Rio Terà Foscarini, onwards through to Ponte dell’Accademia, spanning, stepping, then threading through loiterers on Campo Santo Stefano – before finally veering left, right, left. The problems persist. Insoluble, posed differently, moulting into unvarnished doubts. No nostalgia. No need. No more.

Text © Max Andrews, 2025