Captivated by the mosaics all around me while growing up in northern Italy, I set out to explore the potential of this ancient art form in the contemporary world. My focus is to apply traditional methods to modern subjects, realistic and abstract. Playing with the hues and textures the stones provide, I cut each piece — called a tessera — by hand with traditional tools: hammer and hardie. Every tessera is unique and a sculpture in itself. I allow the qualities of the stone to be the colour and the canvas at the same time giving each piece an organic feel, spatial dimension, and sense of movement. My quest is to create mosaics that bridge this ancient art form to contemporary emotions. Grasping the ever-fleeting inspiration, I give my ideas a life as timeless as the stone itself.