Refined skills and creative imagination
Art of Chandana Ranaweera:
Ashley Halpe
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Chandana Ranaweera
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Chandana Ranaweera has called several of his current series of
exhibitions Samadhi Chinthana. One imagines him as seated in Samadhi
before his utterly simple materials - a sheet of paper, a pen charged
with black ink. An image begins to take shape on the screen of his
imagination. He focuses intensely on it. He begins to draw on the paper
and our imaginations focus in company with his.
Chandana gives us three categories of work. One is of abstractions
from the reality around us: trees, bats in flight, a boat drawn up on
shore, a flute player. All rendered with scrupulous fineness of line and
shade. The shading is achieved by a multitude of fine lines. There are
also boldly created shapes. Another category is the depiction of his own
imaginings. A third is his adoption of a uniquely distinctive form of
collage. He tears shapes from printed newspaper and also takes lengths
of discarded ayurvedic prescriptions written on ola leaf and glues them
on smallish pieces of drawing paper - approxe 10 inches by 12 or 14
inches and then draws on the surface: a standing Buddha image, monks in
a vihara.
There is an interplay between the mostly vertical lines of the images
and the horizontals of the lines of newsprint and the delicate lines of
the Sinhala of the prescriptions.
The art of Chandana has earned perceptive and enthusiastic critical
commentary from Edwin Ariyadasa, Gwen Herath and the present writer. A
substantial collection of his work can be viewed at his rural home
Mallika Niwasa in Alawwa. No believer in guru mushtiya, he eagerly and
generously passes on his skills and knowledge of art history and
artistic understanding to generations of young students at his old
school, Rathanalankara Vidujala, Alawwa, where he teaches and where I
have had the opportunity of admiring what he is doing when I was able to
visit an art show at the school. His students have won recognition and
several awards at art competitions. |
