In 'Tonio' Scully joined four separate panels of varying depths to create a painted relief. The parts occupy several planes and project over the edge of what might otherwise have been a perfect rectangle. Scully began to make paintings with relief elements in the early 1980s. By making his paintings three-dimensional he gave them a more emphatic, physical quality. Panels closer to the viewer can assert themselves more strongly than those recessed, depending on the angle from which they are seen. As the artist acknowledged, 'I liked the idea of looking at a painting that you could not look at just from the front but had to move around'.