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'Era' produces subdued power
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As an ever-alert artist, Amarasena Kodithu- wakku, keeps on moving. On a previous occasion he held an exhibition under the title "Epoch". In his latest display of works, he has entered a phase described as "Era".
Artist Amarasena Kodithuwakku is a creative person exuding a quiet and subdued power. There is nothing flamboyant or spectacular about him.
The dominant trait of his art is restraint. At times a "folksy" simplicity comes through. His aesthetic evolution began in his childhood spent in a village in the south of Sri Lanka. For a sensitive child the village is a veritable institution for sentimental education.
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The natural splendour of the rural landscape enriches the soul of the child as he grows up.
The colourful rites and the rituals that are an integral part of the stream of life in the villages etch deeply in the inner being of the village child who has the right frequency to his rural environment.
Aesthetic urges
Amarasena Kodithu- wakku was able with the passage of time to refine his inborn aesthetic urges. His effusive creative yearnings acquired specific shape and direction at the Institute of Aesthetic Studies where he had his formal education in art.
During his long years in the Department of Education as teacher and administrator, his own creative work was to some extent at least in abeyance. Perhaps retirement from formal and routine employment unleashed his creativity. It was in the atmosphere of retirement that his art began to flourish.
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When artist Amarasena Kodithuwakku began to draw the childhood memories seem to have asserted themselves in his subconscious.
One of his paintings that amuse me very much is the piece depicting the village groom taking his coy bride on their honeymoon in a cart drawn by a horse.
Temple murals
The lives evoke that of those temple murals that stylise men, women, animals, trees and other physical features. The painting has a whimsicality that makes it quite memorable. The colour that predominates is green stressing the rural environment and a "feel" of soothing freshness.
Even the face of the docile bull assumes a vague human shape making it a kind of willing companion to the bridal couple. The details are kept to a minimum allowing the simplicity of expression to make its impact upon the viewer.
This charming simplicity echoes in his painting on the themes of the perahera in Kandy.
The high pageant is transformed into a spectacle in a child's world. The choreography of the pageant as it is recorded in Amarasena Kodithuwakku's art reflects the gleeful confusion a child experiences when he is witnessing such a spectacle. The facility with which artist Amarasena Kodithuwakku can shift to a child's view-point in his art is a special feature in his creative expression.
His palette could be characterized as non realistic, when he portrays human figures. But, in his arrangement of shapes and colour movements, he is in the region of abstract painting.
As in many artists of our day in Amarasena Kodithuwakku too we tend to detect a predilection to juggle realism and the abstract. This invariably results in a display of mixed offerings, restricting the possibility of the artist's "personality" coming though.
Artist Amarasena Kodithuwakku's semi-realistic abstract, of "Mother and Child" deserves special mention as a piece with the variety of depth in carefull study of this piece, the viewer can trace red streaks of blood in the mother's body converging on the child, implying, that the mother's affection transforms her blood into breast milk.
His painting depicting a "Quartet of Women" is a well arranged piece in blue and green.
The figures are so harmonised that together it communicates a highly pleasing sense of creative balance.
It is one of the most advanced pieces on display at this exhibition. Artist Amarasena Kodithuwakku derives considerable inspiration from the motifs that the living pageant of existence in the south can confer on the artist.
The life of the fisher-folk as they unceasingly confront the vagaries of the deep sea yields perennial subject-matter to artist Amarasena Kodithuwakku.
As he presented the third exhibition of his works artist Amarasena Kodithuwakku had hinted at a creative future replete with high promise.
Lovers of art can hail him as a significant talent still in the process of emerging fully.
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