Maybe “stone paintings” isn’t the best phrase to describe the amazing artworks of Stefano Furlani, but it’s so unusual that I just didn’t know what to call it. The Italian artist basically searches for geometrically appropriate stones on the beach and arranges them to create complex compositions.

Stefano Furlani discovered this fascinating art form while playing with his son Davide, when he was three years old. They would scour the beach for strangely shaped stones and then assemble them into all kinds of shapes and designs, on the sand, under an umbrella. As time passed and they both got better at this ‘game’, they started creating more and more intricate and detailed artworks, and at one point, Stefano started feeling disappointed that the artworks he and his son had worked so hard to create got washed out by the sea or trampled on by other people. So he started creating these stone compositions on hard canvases and preserving them as proper works of art.

While some of Stefano Furlani’s stone compositions may seem simplistic at first glance, a careful inspection reveals just how well the stones fit together, which suggests that the artist invests a lot of time into finding the perfect combination. And it’s not just the shape and size of the stones that he always seems to keep in mind, but also their color, which makes some of his works resemble actual paintings.

Although the artist doesn’t reveal how much one of these stone paintings takes him to complete, it seems like laborious work, so I’d wager that his most complex pieces have taken him days, if not weeks to finish.

For more of Stefano Furlani’s amazing stone art, check out his official website and his Facebook page.

 

Photos © Stefano Furlani

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