Painting Drawings, Drawing Paintings: Ripples and Droplets by Maria Fernanda Cardoso is a ten storey high public artwork applied to the concrete façade of Castle Residences alongside the Porter House Hotel in mineral paint, covering three hundred and thirty five squared meters. A distinctive and exceptional landmark it is Cardoso’s most ambitiously scaled work to date and the largest public artwork in Sydney’s central business district.

Maria Fernanda Cardoso is a leading Colombian Australian contemporary artist who's pioneering career spans three decades. She delights in finding, revealing and celebrating the beauty and magnificence of seemingly insignificant forms and forces of nature. Her practice involves scientific research and the creation of complex artworks from natural found objects in unexpected ways, often magnifying minute details and animals in order to enrich our appreciation of their importance in our ecosystem. The brief to Cardoso for this artwork was to integrate an artwork into the architectural design that continues her exploration of bio-geometry and beautiful repetitive organic forms. Like much of her work, her creative response is a public artwork that illustrates the power of small actions to have major consequences.

Cardoso explored intricate and complex designs in light reflecting mineral paint using a uniquely developed hybrid painting/drawing technique. From these designs she selected one to be meticulously reproduced at a very large scale, giving the appearance of a massive gestural work applied directly to the wall. The biophilic design calls to mind natural phenomena such as rain on a spider web, ripples on water, growth rings of a tree—meticulously enlarged to the scale of the built environment. Changing fluidly according to one’s vantage point, drawing the eye in from the street and upwards from below, the fine organic lines of white mineral paint contrast beautifully with the surrounding architectural order and urban colour, giving the artwork a quietly powerful presence.

Amanda worked closely with Maria Fernanda and her team at Hutchinson Builders, Candalepas Associates and United Development Sydney to drive, facilitate and manage the artwork development through to completion. The artist worked closely with Angelo Candalepas throughout the commission in order to beautifully integrate the art and architecture.

Artist Representation: Sullivan + Strumpf Gallery

Images: Amanda Sharrad, Maria Fernanda Cardoso, Candalepas Associates