First experiments based on Barbara Kruger

To experiment working in the style of Barbara Kruger I have began looking at how screenprinting. This is one of the methods she uses when creating her compositions and so I have tried using this technique too. After being inspired by Paloma Faith's song , 'Crybaby', I have taken lines from her song and create a stencil of them out of cartridge paper, using a scalpel. (This is a form of a reductive process). I selected lines that made it clear what my theme of stereotyping is about, especially when it comes to men showing emotion. For example, 'open up to me' and 'don't have to man up'. These lines have clear references to the theme that I am exploring and so this would be explicit to the viewer.

Before even trialling out screeprinting, I painted a double-page spread thoroughly in black acrylic to form a background. After doing this, I painted through my stencil with a white acrylic and a brush so that the words would be prominent on top of the black due to the harsh contrast. However, getting each letter to look neat was difficult as it was a paper stencil and so once it had dried, I had to touch up the edges with black acrylic paint so that the edges of the letters were flush. As it sounds, this was a long process and so my next step was to experiment with screenprinting as this is a more efficient technique in producing more experiments.




I chose to use the same colour palette of black, white and red as Kruger as these colours contrast well when it comes to layering text upon a background. As the black background in the previous experiment took a long time to dry, this time I have brushed my background colour (red) onto the page. Therefore, I have used a dry brush and so the drying time significantly shortened. This also meant that the edges of the page appear textured as the brush was barely loaded with paint. Once I had screenprinted over the top of the background, the white text brought harmony to the composition as the white is a common shade between background and foreground. Although I did use a copious amount of ink to produce the screenprint, each letter isn't solely white as there are gaps in the ink. However, I like this look as it presents the idea of challenging stereotypes that I am trying to portray by appearing like a breaking force. Therefore, this highlights the wavering nature of stereotypes and people's opinions on how they think a man should act.