Kristen McClarty started her series "Head Under Water" in 2022, with several abstract woodcuts. After setting it aside for some time, she is now expanding the series from woodcut to screen print and monotype. In this series, McClarty uses colour and shape to tell a story of her own body under water, in a place that holds her. By working in abstraction, she dispenses with the need to make a recognisable form.

This work was originally developed to pay homage to a deep connection between the artist and the environment, felt most by the artist when swimming in the wild ocean and inland waters of South Africa. In the water, the separation between the body and the space falls away, as the liquid holds the body, push pulling in the current, squeezing the lungs, popping the ears, filling the spaces. From above, it seems that the water and the body have become one, with no evidence of where one starts and the other ends. The edges of the artist are lost to the environment. They are as one.