Moving further into abstraction, Fairweather’s paintings from the late 1950s and early 1960s are amongst his greatest artistic achievements. This painting, Kite flying draws its inspiration from the Chinese kite-flying festival, the Chung Yang, which occurs on the ninth day of the ninth month and celebrates the protection of the family from misfortune. Here, Fairweather captures upturned faces, sky, clouds, tussling kites and their strings. The work has a sense of balanced discord with occasional flashes of red and blue that disrupt its surface. Fairweather noted that his intention was to avoid melody: ‘one can get so terribly tired of melody if one hears it over and over again’, he once said. As viewers, our eye does not move rhythmically through the image, but darts from point to point, not unlike kites being buffeted by the wind.