The cairo:context-t structure contains the current state of the rendering device, including coordinates of yet to be drawn shapes. Cairo contexts, as cairo:context-t instances are named, are central to Cairo and all drawing with Cairo is always done to a cairo:context-t instance.

Use the cairo:create function or the cairo:with-context macro to create a Cairo context for a target surface. Memory management of the cairo:context-t instance is done with the cairo:reference and cairo:destroy functions.