2020—2021

During lockdown in 2020 and 2021, Cass’ principal focus was his two-part project Where Once the Waters. Alongside that work, the artist experimented in the studio, combining past approaches (such as applying watercolour to wood and paper, as he had done in the early stages of his career) with the style he’d been developing pre-pandemic (such as his Rising Horizon series). This was necessitated in part because material gathering at flea markets and antique fairs had to be suspended, and so surfaces were created from items around the studio, but also because this destabilising period called for a more subtle response, which antique paper, card, canvas and wood offered. On this page you can see a curated selection of works in oil and watercolour side by side, created during two years of restricted activity. Further artworks started during this period were revealed at Venice Biennale 2022.