Kristen McClarty
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Overview
Kristen McClarty is a South African printmaker based in Kommetjie, just outside Cape Town, whose practice centres on relief and monotype printmaking.
McClarty’s focus gradually shifted towards relief printmaking, drypoint intaglio, monotype, and, since 2021, woodblock — a medium she describes as having become her true artistic home.
Deeply informed by materiality and process, her work explores the traces left behind by lived experience within the natural world.
Working primarily with woodblock, McClarty investigates the idea of residual energy — the unseen imprints held within surfaces such as water, rock, air, and organic matter. Her compositions balance abstraction and atmosphere, capturing movement, texture, and the quiet rhythms of nature through layered mark-making and tactile forms.
Influenced by the physicality of sea swimming and the sensory experience of immersion, her works evoke shifting light, fluidity, and the passage of time. Through carving and repetition, McClarty creates prints that feel both meditative and deeply connected to place.
In 2024, McClarty was elected as an Associate Member (ARE) of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers (RE Printmakers, UK), recognising her contribution to contemporary printmaking on an international stage. Her woodcut Suspended Thoughts (2022) was subsequently acquired for the RE Diploma Collection at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, marking her first work to enter a UK public collection.
Circle is proud to present McClarty’s work as part of its programme supporting contemporary artists working across print and material-led practices.
Studio: Kommetjie, South Africa
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Works
Kristen McClarty
Holding my breath12 layer reduction woodblock print100 x 70 cmEdition of 3Series: Head Under WaterInitially, I painted my surroundings, a commentary on the past and present. Now working out of my home studio in Kommetjie, my focus has been on relief and drypoint intaglio, with repeated experimentation in monotype. In January 2021, I moved to woodblock and I think it is where I'll stay. Process and authentically connecting with my materials is important to me. I must see the evidence of the wood in my print. I bow down to the natural grain and choose a block to best show off what I plan to carve on it. I believe in the connection from the eye to the brain and through the hand, to the plane that I work on. A translation and transfer of my energy to the piece of art. McClarty's recent body of work Head Under Water is a series of semi abstract reduction woodblock prints inspired by photographs taken of the artist submerged under water, from above. The edges of the form are broken and with no clear start and end to the body, it becomes a part of the environment.Initially, I painted my surroundings, a commentary on the past and present. Now working out of my home studio in Kommetjie, my focus has been on relief and drypoint intaglio, with repeated experimentation in monotype. In January 2021, I moved to woodblock and I think it is where I'll stay. Process and authentically connecting with my materials is important to me. I must see the evidence of the wood in my print. I bow down to the natural grain and choose a block to best show off what I plan to carve on it. I believe in the connection from the eye to the brain and through the hand, to the plane that I work on. A translation and transfer of my energy to the piece of art. McClarty's recent body of work Head Under Water is a series of semi abstract reduction woodblock prints inspired by photographs taken of the artist submerged under water, from above. The edges of the form are broken and with no clear start and end to the body, it becomes a part of the environment.Installation shots
