Learning
by leaving marks.

The paintings here came out of one concentrated period around 2014. Fifteen canvases, and a lot of learning by doing.

“I did a bunch of ugly ones until I started to learn how to control what I was doing.”

That is the beginning of this work: no polished origin story, just the willingness to make another painting. Across the collection, colour gathers into something almost recognisable — a depth, a heat, a change in the weather — then slips back into paint.

Now Cai wants to return to the canvas. Commissions are the way back: a real room, a personal palette, a reason to begin. The next paintings will be made in conversation with the people who live with them.