Found: 2020—

During 2020 and 2021, whilst travel and exhibition activities were curtailed, Cass experimented in the studio, returning to past approaches – such as applying watercolour to wood and paper, as he had done in the early stages of his career – alongside the style he’d been developing pre-pandemic. This was necessitated in part because material gathering at flea markets and antique fairs had to be suspended, and so surfaces were created from existing items stored around the studio, but also because this destabilising period called for a more subtle response, which antique paper, card, canvas and wood offered.

Works in this style continued post-pandemic, as restrictions were lifted and visits to flea markets could resume. Works from this, Cass’s longest-running series, have informed his Light on Water and Days projects and have recently been exhibited at Hawick Museum, Edinburgh City Art Centre, Joy Machine and Trinity Buoy Wharf as part of the John Ruskin Prize, for which Cass was shortlisted.