A style question, and a Cairngorm question!

Question

Style - When I draw on a component with a backgroundColor, why can't I see it?
Cairngorm -
Sometimes I want to use the result directly in a module that I am showing on the screen. For instance, when I query the server for a group of items in a category. However, I can not add an event listener to the cairngorm result in the module (view) itself. Is the appropriate way to achieve this:
1) Dispatch my Event
2) In the result, populate an arraycollection with the items from the category (using a setter, so I can dispatch event)
3) In module, listen for said event
4) Populate tile from this eventhandler
Is this correct?

Answer 1

Well it's pretty simple:
<mx:Canvas id="mainCanvas" backgroundColor="0x000000">
     <mx:creationComplete>
          <[CDATA[
               var g:Graphics = mainCanvas.graphics;
               g.beginGradientFill( GradientType.LINEAR, [0xffffff,0xffffff], [1.0,0.0], [0,255], verticalGradientMatrix( 0, 0, mainCanvas.width, mainCanvas.height );
               g.drawRect( 0, 0, mainCanvas.width, mainCanvas.height );
               g.endFill();
          ]]>
     </mx:creationComplete>
</mx:Canvas>
If I remove the backgroundColor, I can see the gradient. If I leave backgroundColor, I can only see black.