The NEWSPRINT Series came about after several conversations, over the years, about the state of the news or “media”. These conversations have taken place online and offline, with friends and family and strangers. The artist’s style of painting abstracts with lines on circular canvases was especially suited to the subject matter.
The contoured hatching used to build each painting in this series is used to represent fragmented letters and words, news stories that divide us further, and create fear. Short lines ending in others of its kind, short-lived new cycles. Where news is click-bait competition – each line competing with the one next to it, making it all dark and muddied. The lines are similar to chicken scratches in the mud. Like the chickens searching for nuggets of nutrition, we search for nuggets of truth in the news that is presented to us. Erratic, furtive and anxiety-inducing.
This was a difficult series for the artist to paint. Typically, Naina prefers working with bright colours. She enjoys the challenge of working with a limited colour palette, to create art that seems to be painted with infinite hues. However, there has been nothing bright or colourful about the news. This is heavy work, in contrast to Naina’s usual light & bright work.
To bring forth a modicum of hope, the painted lines coming together in circular wholes is an allusion to our ability to, perhaps, zoom out and focus on the bigger picture. To come together as a species, despite the loss of trust in the fourth pillar. Or, the circular canvases can be seen as prisons. For the freedom of press and speech. The truth confined to our minds, to hushed conversations in private spaces.
The NEWSPRINT series comprises of ten canvases that are 7.5 inches in diameter. Two canvases that are 8 inches in diameter. And one canvas that is 24 inches in diameter. All canvases are stretched over a frame of compressed cardboard, which is 0.5 inches deep. Each canvas is sealed with multiple layers of acrylic varnish, giving them a look of being lacquered. A highly reflective surface.
Each painting looks like disintegrated newsprint – where the letters peel off of the paper and float around, making no sense anymore.
