Sopheap Pich and his family were forced to flee their native Cambodia during a period of civil war in the late 1970s. Pich frequently makes use of materials common to daily life in Southeast Asia, such as bamboo, rattan, burlap from rice bags, and beeswax, to create poetic objects that are rich in socio-political overtones as well as references to time, nature, memory, and the body. Tones #1 belongs to a series of drawings the artist created by dipping sticks of bamboo into pigment and then precisely rolling them onto large sheets of paper. As the paint dried, the marks left by the stick lightened in color, resulting in layers of variegated pattern across the paper’s surface. To introduce variety into the work’s overall composition, Pich relied on the natural texture of his materials, achieving non-uniformity through irregularities in the surface of the table on which the work was made and the pressure of his hand while rolling the bamboo.