An ochre meadow opens across the foreground, ringed by dark firs, and above the treeline a great bank of white cloud comes down until it has taken most of the sky. Standing alone in the grass, small and slightly left of centre, is a single mark of violet, the only figure in the painting and barely more than a gesture. Everything else is scale and weather. The passing clouds of the title are also, in Italian, a mood that lifts, and the picture holds both readings: a solitary presence in a clearing, waiting for the sky to change.

Samantha Torrisi was born in Catania in 1977 and graduated from the Accademia di Belle Arti di Catania in 2002. She lives and works on the slopes of Mount Etna. Her painting begins with images taken from photography, film, and personal footage, which she rebuilds in oil until the specific becomes atmospheric. The solitary figure held in a space too large for it has run through her work since the early urban paintings, and here it returns in the landscape. Among her newest canvases.