ABSTRACT
Since the days of Leonardo Davinci to contemporary times, painters have worked extensively on paper using it as support for painting, such as cartridge paper, water colour paper, straw board, chip board and recycled paper. The fear of damage due to tear, contact with water, humidity, fold cracks, aging, limitation of standardized sizes has been a concern. Meanwhile the cost of these conventional artist paper has been on the increase alongside the generation of waste paper on a daily bases within our campuses and office environments. This paper aims at investigating the possibility of reproducing a paper with a good level of flexibility and toughness which could effectively reduce the aforementioned issues and also be an addition to the known conventional paper by attempting a recycling of waste paper as a support for contemporary painting practice to further encourage innovative thinking in recycling and experimentation within art students and practicing artist.
To achieve a verifiable and reliable results, Exploratory and Experimental design of study was applied to test and answer the research questions raised in the course of investigating the suitability of recycling waste paper as a support for contemporary painting practice. The studio production process was carried out in Four (4) simple stages: Procurement of Items for the Recycling Process, Production Process for the Recycling of the Waste Paper, Creative process of the visual concept and the painting process of the visual concept of the Egbabonelimin masquerade.
The results of this research reviled that waste paper can be recycled into suitable support for contemporary painting practice which encourages sourcing of local materials (Exploration and experimentation) this is significant in the study and practice of Painting. As a result of this research, the artist can determine the textural effects (Roughness or Smoothness), flexibility, toughness and size of his or her paper support without additional protective materials like glass or lamination sheet, priming to achieve desired effects and joining to achieve a desired size. The recycling of waste paper into support for painting closes the gaps observed in the known conventional paper.
