Lines - great asset to Chandana
Gwen Herat
ART: Artist Chandana Ranaweera has carved out a niche among
art lovers for his individuality and characteristic painting. Inspired
mostly by temple murals and cave art, he abides by them as his main
topic without wandering into other mediums of which he is not familiar.
He is essentially an artist inspired by his rural surroundings
emerging from his village situated at Alawwa. Ranaweera has spent the
better part of his life in the corridors of temples if he was not
teaching art at his village school.
Mythology has always been a source with Gods and Lords mounted on
steeds and chariots. Using subtle colour as well as black/white, he
leaves his signature on them.
Surprisingly, there is yet another side to his art. Something I
stumbled on accidentally and though I would not scream about this forte.
I was curious and fascinated because I am one who can understand what is
between lines, not necessarily in words alone.
Line-drawing as we may call it, is yet another side of his talent,
brush and palette removed. One has to have steady, strong fingers as
well as the ingenuity to do so. One look at these sketches will arouse
anyone's curiosity and who will come to terms that they are easy. No,
they are not.
As for one, I tried but failed. Geometrical figures, abstracted
langauge roll into one has created improvisation that has impelled him.
Flowing beneath the thick black lines, he creates a supernatural depth
but truly celestial.
Line drawing profoundly influences artists who express their thoughts
from a dark and obsessed mind subconsciously and can affect the
observer's senses. Many carry a narrative in message, a sense confined
only to the painter which summarise a situation why art lovers hesitate
to patronise line drawing or even to study them.
They are a distraction interfering with an artist's spiritual
responses. But the expressive potential in line drawing has not yet been
discovered or accepted which makes an artist end up as a cartoonist.
But some of the line drawings through the medium of stain glass on
characters from the plays of Shakespeare at Stratford-upon-Avon, express
a more passionate view on the art of lines.
At least a bold artist is convinced that lines too are a great asset
to him. Ranaweera builds on them with a bolder, stronger lineage. He
will do it with time but for the present it is a struggle to draw the
attention of art lovers to take a deep and penetrating look. |
