Outside the house where I grew up in Rome grows an enormous peony bush, a luminous mass of pinks dominating the path leading to the house. In spring, thousands of gradations of color – from white to every imaginable shade of pink and fuchsia and grey – cover the right side of the path and the surrounding ground, in a soft, voluptuous, glowing light. The essence of the peony flower with its richly varied, intricate petal structure has since become a favorite subject of investigation for me, resulting in original works of different dimensions.