The artist who prefers ball-point to the brush
Professor Chandima Wijebandara
Former Vice Chancellor, University of Sri Jayewardenepura
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ARTIST: Chandana Ranaweera
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ART: Gone are the days that even man in the street wanted artists to
make life-like images on the canvas. Art is for creating and not for
reproducing reality. Even a photograph is boring and tasteless when it
has no perspective added.
Artists are supposed to see behind and beyond reality and communicate
something exciting and meaningful. This is especially true when one
takes to painting in this age where everybody carries a camera.
Chandana Ranaweera of Alawwa is an experienced art teacher who keeps
continuously experimenting on the ways he can better communicate the way
he interprets reality.
Out of the many possible media open to him, it looks like that he has
given preference to line drawings mainly done with ball-point pens. Now
that there are multicoloured ball points in the market, producing
colourful line drawings has become comfortable to him.
Being an unsophisticated village boy, he seems to have had his world
outlook shaped with a lot of religious and cultural influence. The monks
clad in yellow robes carry their umbrella and alms bowl wherever they
travel, and the village ladies who offer them a spoonful of rice pay
obeisance when the monks come to their door-step on their alms rounds,
were a frequent scene at his village during his childhood.
The village temple was the hub of all social activities and also the
counselling centre for villagers. Flowering plants and trees offering
plenty of fruits to village boys were everywhere those days.
The pleasant and enjoyable environment that he was bred has left
unforgettable aesthetic memories in him that titillates his mind when he
takes his ball pen in hand.
Where words do not enable him to describe his past film-like joys, he
starts doodling. And then his talents in line drawing emerge, producing
images apparently simple but eloquent enough to address to our
sentiments.
Chandana gets highly abstract in some of his drawings. Filtering all
unnecessary details he economises and gives emphasis to areas where he
wants to put his imagination. He is definitely different from a
cartoonist in the sense that he has no story but a message of a subtle
feeling.
The viewer also needs to be a sensitive and creative person to join
him in his abstracting venture. It is not simple beauty that he attempts
to depict. One may not find pretty and smiling faces in his drawings.
Instead his almost caricatured faces, hands, legs and frozen
movements transmit the deep religious truths one learns through the
sermons that a village priest delivers to his audience. One leaves his
exhibition carrying with him a Zen-like spiritually nausea.
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CELEBRATION: Raban players |
MYTH: God riding peacock |
TRANQUILLITY:
Podi Hamuduruvo |
RELIGION: Ganapathi |
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