On a trip to Sardinia, in Summer 2020, Marco Antonini was seeking something between clarity and a spark.

When open-ended plot lines left him adrift, he snapped up a pad from the newsstand, picked up a paint marker the blue of the latitude, and started feverishly drawing.

Filling frames, he drew what he saw. Flashes of sea between nubby hills. A sun-shaped sun. Flora feeling just fine. He drew things he couldn’t have seen, mirages of a delirious island. An underwater tango.

At dusk, he capped the marker and mentally prepared to pack. Then it was back to reality, an unbelievable pad in his baggage.