MF Cardamone

Born-and-raised Philadelphian Maryfran (MF) Cardamone is a painter and printmaker concerned with botany and interplay with popular culture. Echoing early scientific botanical drawings, Dada surrealism, and the pioneering Pop Art collages of Eduardo Paolozzi, Cardamone’s works are inimitable and stunningly rendered.

Cardamone collects plant specimens and combines them with images and words that result in complex visual narratives that reveal the science, history, and beauty of her subjects. This work is part of a series that began with research and native plant collecting that Cardamone conducted shortly after she designed a native Pennsylvania wildlife habitat garden as a result of her studies at the Barnes Foundation Arboretum School. She also finds inspiration in medieval herbals and manuscripts, folklore, traditional Chinese medicine, and Pop Art. To Cardamone, the anatomy of a plant is part of a larger story that involves its historical, medicinal, ecological, spiritual, and mythological aspects.