Kristen McClarty is a specialist printmaker working from her studio in Cape Town, South Africa. Her focus is on relief and monotype printmaking techniques. Her works explore time and space through encounters of place, inspired by her daily interactions with her environment, walking the coastal and mountain paths around Kommetjie, South Africa.
She draws on the idea that lived experience, and energy lingers in a place, recorded on the surfaces of rock, droplets of water and suspended particles in air and liquid. A residual energy, reluctant to leave, pooling in the space or mounting up as a palimpsest on the very structure of the environment. These themes are carried into different bodies of work, some of which continue indefinitely and some of which are transient. Repetition and iteration are a core part of Kristen’s art practice, mirroring and reinforcing the ethos of printmaking and working in editions, as it allows the same story to be told in many places and to different audiences.
Kristen is also a member of The Printing Girls Collective, South Africa, since 2020 and joined The Association for Visual Arts, South Africa in 2021.