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| Wednesday, 28 April 2004 |
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Tilake Abeysinghe's paintings: Celebration of life by Sanath Wickremeratne
Tilake Abeysinghe's work can be viewed at his residence, No 206 Uyana Road, Moratuwa by making a prior appointment. Telephone 2646216 Artists are born, not made. An artist is a creator who portrays his inner feelings for the good of society. As such, a genuine artist will not be influenced by another's work when he creates his own work of art. Tilake Abeysinghe is such an original artist having a unique style of his own. Tilake Abeysinghe's tale of painting goes back to a quiet but edifying childhood spent in the southern village of Karatota etching on little scraps of paper picked at random and for nearly half a century he has been painting and sculpting capturing on canvas and stone the images of his soul with the frenzy of a Michelangelo.
The analogy may be accidental but not pretentious for, Tilake Abeysinghe is a product of Tuscany, a pupil of the Milan Art Academy. The fifty years Tilake has spent with canvases and stone have brought rewards and also disillusionment. Neither impresses the hardy southerner indifferent to pain and pleasure. Because Tilake Abeysinghe is devoted to his art as a sadhu is committed to his faith. There can be no compromise. Again as Buonarrati has asserted even at the risk of penury art must be accomplished without compromise: there can be no mediocrity, only the best must prevail. He will go hungry rather than waste his hands at pot-boilers. Influence The influence of Italian masters seems yet to hover around, especially in his seductive nudes, but Tilake from Milan through his sojourns in Europe and back in Sri Lanka has refurbished the medium. He has not pulled his brush away out of a displaced constraint of puritan mores, to conceal the breathtaking beauty of the naked women. He has turned on canvas and stone the nude from into an aesthetic delight in spite of its physical vulnerability to age and decay. To capture beauty is the compelling aim of the artist unwavered by materialistic consequences. In this idealistic context, the artist lives in his own, often unrealistic orbit. He cannot help himself out but follow the throbbing urge, the God-driven fury in his inner self and give expression and creat the most noble of human emotions called Art. It's an infinite impulse seeking release through Tilake's medium. Often the artist himself is the medium. perhaps he is only transshipping a cargo consigned to him by some unknown force, may be hidden in space unreachable by anything terrestrial. Like phoenix, the Ruhunupura, as he was acclaimed, has risen from the razed embers of the Central Bank; resurrected himself physically in a human endeavour - to push behind a nagging mental wary and resume the work of a lifetime. Here lies the unconquerable spirit of the man and the artist. Nearly hundred original works in painting and sculpture glorify the aesthetic adventures of Tilake Abeysinghe.
Tilake Abeysinghe, internationally reputed painter and sculptor is a graduate of the Academia di Bella Arte de Brera in Milan, where he studied painting under 'Domenico Cantatore and came under the influence of the world renowned sculptor Mario Marini. After graduation from the Academy he held exhibitions at art centres in Italy and Switzerland and established his own Atelier in Milan in 1980. In a professional career spanning over 40 years, he has held over 70 one man exhibitions and has represented Sri Lanka in several international exhibitions. Besides Italy and Switzerland, his work has been exhibited in Sao-Paolo, Montreal, New Delhi, Bangladesh, Fukuoka, Pakistan, Paris, Peking, Copenhagen, Hamburg and London. His major works include a large mural and 25ft high sculpture at the Italian embassy, a mural 82ft long spanning the entire breadth of the Standard Chartered Bank building in Colombo, large mural in bas-relief at the American Express Bank in Colombo (Since destroyed by a bomb blast), a large bronze statue 10ft high at GiranduruKotte, life size statue at Rahula College in Matara, a bust of Sri Nehru at the Indian High Commission, Colombo, and several large paintings (some destroyed by bomb) Portraits, and a 12ft sculptured monument for the Central Bank in Colombo. Features The fount of Tilake's Art is to be found in the lush green fields and forest glades of the Village of Karatota in the deep South where he was born. The salient features of his Art are simplicity and economy. Simplicity of form and economy of means used to bring a canvas to life are again derived from the unwritten philosophy of the Sri Lankan villager, rooted as it is in the teaching of the Thathagata. The softer hues which are his stock in trade are almost Zen in their subtlety-yet intense in expression - like a Chopin Nocturn, but without being nocturnal. Tilake's myriad canvases are a celebration of life itself, an "Ode to Joy" in a Sri Lankan manner. Conspicuously absent from his canvases are the battle and stresses of everyday living which artists who thrive on themes are so fond of depicting. His paintings are instead permiated with ethereal beauty, more often than not in the feminine incarnation. How such idealized femininity stems from a man's creative mind is as beyond our ken as to how Tolstoy wrote Anna Keranina. Yet these canvases which shout for the sheer joy of living have often times been created in spite of dire personal tragedy, like Schubert's music. There is no trace of anguish in them as one finds in Van Gogh's paintings or the last symphonies of Tchaikovsky Tilake's paintings are also highly original. They bear no stamp of allegiance to any other artist, living or dead, and he has no "ism" to describe his work. His work emerges from the well springs of the inner self, - from the need to create. He works without compulsion and certainly dislikes commissions, although compelled to do so at times for a living. But even in commissioned work he insists on a free hand. Tilake's paintings are simple and direct, - like Shelley's poems, - They really do need no titles either. Compulsion Tilake paints from an inner compulsion to create and calls his paintings his "other children". This I think is the core of a true artist. Tilake Abeysinghe has been awarded several accolades during his long career. Among them are, Gold award at the Japan-Sri Lanka Exhibition in 1993, the Kalapathi award of the Sri Lanka Society of Arts (1993), Gold award for the most outstanding personality for aesthetic art by Lions International (1984), The Vishva Prasadini award and the Ruhunuputra award. In 1984 he was invested with the singular title of "Chevalier of the order of Merit" by the Italian Government for his services to art. Recently on September 11, 2003, Tilake was honoured by the University of Rahunu, along with the other illustrious sons of Ruhuna at a felicitation ceremony. The writer is Secretary, Tilake Abeysinghe Foundation in association with Premil Ratnayake and Angelo de Mel. **** Back **** |
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