BACKGROUND

Continuing with my exploration of the grief and sense of loss that I feel about the change in world order, I have decided to make some paintings with crows inspired by the book ‘Grief is the thing with feathers’ by Max Porter. The use of newspaper as a canvas for painting as I have done here was first inspired by William Kentridge’s work that I saw at his exhibition at the RA in 2022, where he made some monumental drawings on printed materials. Some examples below:

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I have recently seen an exhibition by Barbara Walker where she used printed documents extensively in her work. Below are some examples of her use of newspapers:

Walker uses newspapers with content that directly links to her subject matter of social injustices whereas Kentridge is more subtle and often you cannot easily read the printed text in his work although I have read in the description of his work that there is always relevance in the text.

METHOD

Since my studio is out-of-action at the moment due to building work, I have set up a temporary studio in a different room and I am using Chinese ink on paper instead of my usual oil paint on canvas because of the limited facility that I have.

Learning from the crow drawings that I did with my non-dominant hand, I decided to use my non-dominant hand for the paintings here. Below are the paintings on Chinese rice paper, all A4 size done with my non-dominant hand except the one with the crow sticking out its tongue – that was done with my dominant hand for comparison.

Then I decided to paint on a newspaper and I chose The Financial Times because it is one of the few newspapers that I can bear to read given my general frustrations with the biases in the news media. I have painted on the FT in the past and found the ’45 gsm salmon newsprint’ paper absorbency to be at a level that responded well to Chinese ink. I also like the salmon colour against the black Chinese ink. All three paintings below were mostly done with my non-dominant hand with some details such as the shape of the beak and the claws done with my dominant hand.

Below is a video clip that I made using Instagram:

Below is a crow painting on a double page spread of the newspaper where the previous ones were on a single page. The page here was chosen for the photograph of the chickens (about egg prices in the USA) with the painted crow looking in and one of the chickens staring back:

Below is the painting held up to the light:

REFLECTIONS

I have enjoyed developing a new process for painting on the newspapers. I find the paper works well with the Chinese ink, not overly absorbent and has enough material integrity to stay intact even if it gets very wet.

I have continued to enjoy painting with my non-dominant hand as the brush strokes were more expressive with less control. During the painting process, I constantly asked myself which hand I should use, e.g. with the more detailed work such as the curvature of the beak where more control was required, or highlighting the white in the eyeball, then I switch to my dominant hand for those details. I wanted to use as much of my non-dominant hand as possible because I prefer the marks made and it was a good metaphor for the helplessness I and many people feel about the world events at the moment.

Part of the process of this way of making involves buying a newspaper, something that I haven’t done for a long time since I mostly read the news online/on my phone nowadays. I enjoy the physicality of opening and turning the news pages, then reading the printed text and selecting the pages with headlines that stir me in some way.

Examining the newspaper so closely also reminded me of my early engineering career when I worked extensively on automating newspaper printing presses for Fleet Street as well as local newspapers with ‘cutting edge technology’ for that time period of the early 1990s using fibre optic based digitally synchronised ‘electronic line shaft’ control systems. The presses were enormous and ran at very high speed. It was exhilarating to work on those projects and machines especially as a young engineer. Decades later, I am now studying newsprint closely again for a different purpose – I used to scrutinise the print registration of the colours (poor registration would cause ghosting) and I would respond to the results by varying the control parameters for correction. Now I scrutinise the news content and respond by painting on the newspaper. I can say that the former was a lot easier – I felt completely in control of what was happening. Whereas I rarely feel in control of my painting process and I continue to feel zero control over what is happening in the world – all I can do is to read about them in the newspapers. This has become an interesting juxtaposition of my relationship with newspapers over the decades.

As I work more and more on these newspaper paintings, I have become calmer compared to when I first started as I have documented in some of my earlier blogs about voicelessness and going through the grief curve. I wonder if this is because the world situation has improved (no), or I have become desensitised by the constant revelations of world disasters (possibly) or having a way to respond to and express myself through paintings on the newspapers has given me a route to release my anger therefore making me feel that I am doing something about it. I think definitely ‘yes’ to the latter point, the painting process has certainly helped me to channel my thoughts and feelings.

LEARNING

I have developed a new process of painting on newspapers as a way to respond to what’s happening in the world. I have continued to use crows as a symbol of the grief that I feel about the loss of or change in world order. Working with newspapers reminded me of how my relationship with newspapers has changed over the decades since I was a young engineer. I feel this is the beginning of an exploration and I want to continue and do more because it gives me a way to respond to the world at the moment.

One point that I discussed with my tutor was how I ‘held the newspaper up to the light’ as an accidental discovery when I stuck the newspaper paintings to the glass window for photographing. It is a good metaphor for ‘exposing’ the news and also the light shining through the other side of the print revealed additional images therefore making the overall composition more ambiguous.

NEXT STEPS

Continue to make more paintings in this way to explore, to develop my ideas and the process.

Experiment with holding the painted newspaper to a light or lamp to see how it could work as an indoor installation.