Grey Blossom

When I was young I couldn't stand news papers. Their smell gave me nausea and I couldn't touch them because of the ink stains you got on the fingers. It amuses me now to think that my dislike of news papers was as strong as my love for trees, before I even knew about ecology.

This summer I surprised myself: I became a news addict. I couldn't stop. It wasn't pretty, it wasn't healthy! I tried to concentrate on the fragile harmony of nature and flowers, and I couldn't. I was overwhelmed by the noises of the war. I became aware of this huge mass of information swirling around me. It's difficult to find the right balance. Alain de Botton says there are two ways to keep people uninformed: not enough information or too much information. There is no doubt what is our problem.

After a while I succeeded more or less to moderate my relationship with the radio and the internet. And when I recovered, I realized I had to show how my flowers have been spoiled by this addiction to information. I couldn't just go back drawing beautiful flowers and forget what happened during the summer. I decided to convey my ambivalent feelings about news by means of news paper. And I get to have dirty fingers now.

For this picture, ( News Asters, 18.2 x 11 cm, mixed media on paper) I used news papers, of course. It wasn't so easy to glue tiny bits of paper. Then I planned to use toilet paper. It seemed interesting to have the two worst quality paper on the same picture. I dropped the idea when I figured out that toilet paper was even more tricky to glue. Perhaps next time...