Print Exchange 2023: Kristen McClarty

Kristen McClarty is a printmaker working in the coastal village of Kommetjie, outside Cape Town, South Africa. She specialises in woodblock print, and usually works on a large scale, focussing on the environment that she finds herself in. A wild and wind-swept place with flora and fauna that has adapted to the sometimes-harsh conditions. Kristen’s woodblock prints draw on concepts that she has been working on over the last year. Elements of self, under water, abstract self-portraits examining how the artist integrates with the environment, where she starts and ends. Fleeting existence. And the idea that thought, energy and experience linger in a place, recorded on the surfaces of rock, droplets of water and the suspended particles in air and liquid. A residual energy, reluctant to leave, pooling in the space or mounting up as a palimpsest on soil, rock, flora and the very structure of a natural environment.