Claudia Damichi | Life In Technicolour

Artist Claudia Damichi takes her work to new heights on Sydney’s facades with optical geometrics that revitalise rendered brick and spur passers by to look up from their phones.

Geometric studies in gouache that litter Claudia Damichi’s white-painted studio floor give away a life-long fascination with pattern and colour. They also provide some insight into the design of her next large-scale painting on an urban wall of Sydney.

‘Artwalls’ are a relatively new direction for Claudia who, until recently, was best known for the acrylic on canvas domestic scenes she shows at the Sophie Gannon gallery in Melbourne. Now most of her work is commissioned, site-specific and “in response to architecture”, with real scenes replacing the imagined ones.

“My considerations are entirely based on the site and the architecture it sits in,” she explains, “and of course the people who live there.”

Her sense of and response to ‘place’ shows in her home just beneath the studio; she lives with her husband and two daughters on the upper levels of a converted warehouse in Redfern Sydney, and her studio flows onto the rooftop terrace above. For Claudia, the space, light and elevation provide her with everything she needs. Like her paintings, the interior is stripped back but framed in pattern.