From sunrises to headline stories, The New York Times is Sho Shibuya’s daily canvas

Sho Shibuya’s work is synonymous with The New York Times newspaper. Since 2020, the Brooklyn-based artist and designer has been framing his daily paintings inside the broadsheet’s 12 by 22 format; a size that he fittingly compares to a typical New-York-sized apartment window. The paper’s presence in his practice started in the long days of lockdown when he began covering increasingly ominous headlines with sunrise views from his small studio; a meditation to stay sane while stuck inside.

Unlike projects many of us started in the quiet of lockdown that later got lost when life picked back up again, Sho’s daily ritual stuck. What started as painting over the news with the everyday beauty of nature, slowly turned into facing it head on: exploring his emotions and reactions to a daily onslaught of sad, sometimes happy, but always immediate stories. The artist has been holding onto the paper’s headlines for a little bit longer each day, visualising them into simple, graphic artworks that have the ability to replace words. His goal? To create things that “share a concept without a caption”, just like a billboard.

I meet with Sho on a video call from his studio, which he answers, apron on, seemingly mid-painting, a floor-to-ceiling set of archival drawers behind him that hold only a fraction of the works he’s made over the years. When turning the camera to show me the size of the window he looks at every sunrise out of, he reveals another side of his studio that’s piled high with an evergrowing collection of paintings. Newspapers are stacked from the floor up, covering every surface. He laughs, saying it’s something he needs to get round to sorting out – the cost of being so prolific; an ongoing storage problem.

He doesn’t focus much on these past works, but always on the painting he’s doing today. And so, these daily creative acts, built by constraints and consistency, are a true testament to what happens when we treat creativity as something as intrinsic as eating breakfast or brushing our teeth. They’re also a display of what new creative possibilities a commitment to an unchanging format for our work can offer.

It’s Nice That: I guess to start off it would be lovely to know a bit about how you got into painting. You previously ran a graphic design studio, Placeholder, which we featured on It’s Nice That back in 2020! So it’s lovely to be in touch again, and to be getting some insight into your personal work this time around.

Sho Shibuya: Yes, that’s right, it’s so nice to be speaking with you again!

I have been painting for probably around eight years now. I started painting back in 2016 – back then, I didn’t know how to paint at all. At the time, I was an art director at a luggage company called Away. When I joined, I was their first creative employee, working on campaigns and so on, and there was one particular campaign I was doing some graphic design work for, which was about customers being able to personalise the cases they bought, so we had local calligraphers painting directly onto cases. They were working with us in our very small studio on the project. So while I was working away on the graphic design they painted behind me, and I got quite curious about the process.

At the same time, coincidently, I had recently visited the Dia Beacon museum in upstate New York, where I saw an exhibition on the Japanese artist On Kawara. Kawara simply painted each day he lived with the date – for example, March 26, 1984 – on a plain coloured canvas. If he couldn’t finish a painting in one day he destroyed it. I was really struck by his precise style of painting, where every letter is carefully drawn by hand. He also used to create these boxes for each of the artworks to live inside, and behind these storage boxes were newspapers from the same day he painted on, showing what happened on the day. I was really taken aback by the whole concept, that you could tell a story with something so mundane.

So these two events kind of came together and made me think that maybe I could start painting. I asked the calligrapher working in the studio at the time about what kind of brushes he was using and straight after work that day I stopped by the art supply store and picked up some things to get me started.

INT: That’s when you first started your Sunrise From A Small Studio series right?

SS:Yes, that started out in lockdown, when I was stuck in my small apartment. I would look out of my typical ‘New-York-sized’ apartment window each morning and I noticed that the sunrises were as beautiful, the sky was so quiet and nobody was outside. It was a very special time but also a period of so much suffering, all whilst nature was thriving. Each day the headlines from The New York Times were getting more and more ominous, there were presidential elections, the Black Lives Matter movement and obviously the search for a vaccine – we didn’t know much about Covid at all. So, all of us were very worried.

I was really intrigued by the quiet I found in nature and I began to paint over The New York Times, almost as if to erase the news with nature, and that kept me sane. This format somehow became a meditation to keep my mind calm and survive such an unusual time. Yeah, that was 2020… Since then, I’ve been painting every day.

INT: It’s amazing that you have been painting so consistently for so long. Lockdown was a very strange time and I think whilst many of us may have started projects back then, we certainly haven’t kept up with them since, so that’s incredible.

What are some of the rituals that surround this daily act of painting? How have you set it into your routine over the years?

SS:I wake up in the morning and the first thing I do is climb up to my roof to take a photo of the sunrise. Sometimes I take a timelapse and leave my phone up there if it’s not too windy or wet. Then I read the news and speak to friends and family. Afterwards I go on my run – every day I run 3 miles and on the way back I pick up my copy of the paper at the local neighbourhood newsstand. People often ask me if I’m subscribed to The New York Times but I’m not. I don’t subscribe because it comes in a roll and that damages the quality of the paper for my paintings. So I always get my copy from the guy at my local newsstand Ali. We really have become the best of friends over the years… and then I finally get to painting.

NT: Haha that’s brilliant! I was going to ask if there is a local spot you always go to get the papers. It’s so nice you have built up a relationship with someone through the project.

SS:Yes it really is. When I travel he saves me extra copies for each day I’m away.

INT:I’d love to talk more about the materials that you use. What’s really nice about your work is that you’re using this everyday format of the newspaper, but you can also see a use of everyday or household materials, particularly for the 3D elements you bring into your work. I’m sure every piece is quite different, but I was wondering if you could tell us more about these materials?

SS: While acrylic paint is always my base material, I pretty much use whatever I have that’s available to achieve a certain concept. I’m very open to using anything, probably because I have never formally learnt painting. For instance I recently did a 3D snake on the front page for Chinese New Year, using my experience with origami. This was just a straight shape but the shadow really brings it to life and makes something interesting.

I think over time, as I’ve painted more and more, I’ve become more experimental. I think that my rule of using The New York Times has helped keep the look of my work consistent, even when using completely different materials day to day. That’s probably why I like making rules in my artwork or in my life. I think that it helps to keep me consistent and in doing so, that consistency makes me open to anything beyond it.

INT:I really like that idea – how these kinds of constraints can actually create more possibilities. Even though you think they might limit you, they actually steer you in exciting directions. Does it feel kind of intimidating to be doing a project that essentially has no end to it? There is always going to be more news every day.

SS: Yes, every day there is new news, and it’s always heartbreaking, like stories on war or the future of climate change. So much of what we see is so sad, but I keep painting. By doing that I try to focus on the present and what I can do today. It’s very important to me personally to keep track of time, to keep hold of the moment and to visualise it. That’s why I put all of my effort into in my work.

If I spend my time focusing on the future or being worried about so many of these things, that is giving energy to them, and I won’t be able to focus on what I need to do today which is to capture the present.

INT: I was also curious to hear about your more recent, news focused work – how you select the stories for these kinds of paintings and how much time you spend researching them before you start them? Or is your painting process a more visceral or emotional reaction to the news each day?

SS:It’s very much like you’ve just said – an emotional thing. I spend probably an hour reading the news in the morning and I find something that has moved me, something I want to share; sometimes it’s an exciting event or something fun. It’s completely subjective to me, whatever I am interested in most that day and feel drawn to paint.

Perhaps from my background in graphic design, my goal really is to share a concept without a caption, almost like a billboard right? Something that you can see in three seconds that can touch you. The only difference is the client is me, I’m doing it just for myself and then I’m sharing my perspective.

INT:That’s a really nice way of putting it. I’m wondering when this kind of more political, or headline focused work started? How did you go from sunrises one day to capturing these stories the next?

SS: The first day I stopped painting the sunrise was the death of George Floyd in 2020. After he was brutally killed by the police, I painted the front of the paper all black on June 2 2020 instead. That was the day that everyone was posting black boxes on Instagram to protest along with the Black Lives Matter movement, so I wanted to use this very simple visual to honour these protestors and join in to stand up against violence. I felt very moved by playing a part in something bigger through my work and then I thought I could use this format to participate in much more.

INT:It’s really interesting to hear that that was the point that started a visual shift in your work. I’m sure your process of painting can offer a cathartic space to begin to process things day to day but are there ever any days you don’t really feel like painting, and, if so, how do you tackle that? Something I really loved in your bio on your site was: ‘I'm good at continuing things.’ I was wondering, what do you think that takes?

SS: I think because I’m Japanese, I’m really good at following rules. In Japan our education is full of so many rules, and so is our way of life. I think Japanese people are very used to having rules or parameters. So I think that kind of an upbringing did have an effect on me. Now I feel like I make rules for myself in useful ways, so that I don’t have to think too much about what to do next. If I have a certain routine every day, I have a foundation to my day and as long as I have that foundation, I have the space to express my emotions and try new things in my work.