Sho Shibuya, Painting the News from a Window
Every morning, before the city fully begins to move, Sho Shibuya stands by the window of his New York apartment. From that narrow space, he photographs the sunrise. After that, he reads the day’s news, goes for a short run, buys the latest edition of The New York Times, and then starts painting. This routine has continued with little interruption since the early days of the pandemic. He paints a series of flat, calm morning skies, with a strip of news placed at the bottom. He paints only an impression of time. There is no illustration of events, no visual commentary on the news itself.
The canvas size he uses matches the front page of The New York Times, about 12 x 22 inches. Shibuya compares it to a typical New York apartment window. This scale is part of his way of positioning the painting as a link between private space and the outside world. From that window he watches the world move, and from the newspaper he learns what happens beyond his field of view.
Before becoming known as a painter, Shibuya was an art director and the founder of Placeholder, a New York based design studio. He worked with clients, deadlines, and clear visual needs. He only began painting in 2016, without a formal fine art background. “I didn’t know how to paint at all,” he said in an interview with It’s Nice That. His interest emerged while working on a campaign involving several local calligraphers. “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.” From there, he learned by trying, failing, and repeating.
This shift in medium did not fundamentally change his way of thinking. He brought design principles into painting. Concept always comes before appearance. Visuals must serve ideas. He is used to doing research before creating something that looks simple. This approach makes his paintings appear direct and easy to read, while never feeling instant. The surface simplicity holds layers of time, context, and repeated decisions. The method is not far from how he worked with clients as a designer. “The only difference now is the client is me,” he said.
One important influence on how Shibuya thinks about time is On Kawara. When he visited Dia Beacon and saw Kawara’s work, he was struck by how something very ordinary could become a marker of existence. Dates, days, time, all recorded without dramatization. “You could tell a story with something so mundane,” Shibuya said. From there, he began thinking about how daily objects could carry history without verbal explanation.
This interest met a global situation in 2020. The pandemic forced people to stay in the same space every day. The city slowed down. New York streets that were usually crowded became quiet. At the same time, the flow of news grew denser. Death counts, emergency policies, political tension. Shibuya responded with a format later known as Sunrise from a Small Studio. Every day, he painted the gradient of the morning sky, then attached a strip of that day’s news at the bottom of the canvas.
He was drawn to the contrast created by these two layers. On one side, a sky that does not change drastically from day to day. On the other, news that is constantly shifting and often harsh. “The contrast between political news and the stillness of nature creates a charged, dynamic reality,” he said in an interview with Visual Atelier 8. These paintings do not attempt to soothe or judge. They invite a more complex reflection by placing two realities within a single frame.
For Shibuya, the practice is both personal and functional. “I began to paint over The New York Times, almost as if to erase the news with nature, and that kept me sane,” he stated. The format is, for him, a form of meditation. The daily routine gives structure to repetitive days. He treats painting as a basic necessity, like eating or sleeping. This statement is not metaphorical. He truly positions artistic practice as part of life itself, rather than an additional activity.
Discipline plays a central role. Shibuya admits that he is accustomed to continuing something over a long period. He links this to his Japanese cultural background, where consistency and repetition are valued. He sets small rules for himself, the canvas size does not change, the format remains the same, the order of activities is almost identical each day. Within these limitations, he finds freedom.
However, the practice is not entirely static. On June 2, 2020, following the murder of George Floyd, Shibuya stopped painting the sunrise for one day. He made a single black canvas titled after that date. This decision marked a shift in attitude. He no longer only placed news beneath the sky, but allowed the news to determine the entire visual field.
Since then, he has more often responded directly to specific events, still using an economical visual language. He chooses symbols that are open enough to be read, felt, and shared instinctively, while remaining tied to their moment in time. “While I do include stories with my paintings, I also accept that the image may become what people remember most. In that way, I try to create something timeless, something that holds a feeling even if the headline is forgotten,” he said.
In works such as Red Sunrise, January 9, 2025, he depicted the ongoing wildfires in Los Angeles through red orange gradients forming a sunrise. He also responded to events in Indonesia by presenting a red to white gradient that reflected the wave of protests on August 30, 2025.
Shibuya’s choice of materials aligns with this approach. He often uses everyday objects, including newspapers, wood, or simple three dimensional elements. He refers to the concept of mottainai, a Japanese idea about not wasting things. These objects have short lifespans but carry traces of lived time. “I can’t ignore the fact that if I painted the same sunrise on a traditional canvas, it wouldn’t carry the same weight,” he said. Newspapers, in particular, are time artifacts for him. He is aware that print media will become increasingly rare. Precisely because of that, he feels this practice is only possible now.
In several interviews, he has expressed his hope that these paintings will one day be read as artifacts. Social media plays a role in distributing his work, but he does not see it as the final goal. He treats Instagram as a digital archive, a place where the paintings gather chronologically. Physical exhibitions remain important to him because they give material weight to the work.
Through this practice, Shibuya does not offer solutions to the chaos of the world. He does not ask viewers to take a particular stance. He simply records. In doing so, he shows that paying consistent attention to time, events, and phenomena is itself a position. In a world that moves quickly, he chooses to pause each morning, look out the window, and paint what exists that day. He demonstrates that a political stance can emerge from the everyday.
