Capturing moments on canvas

Ruwanthi ABEYAKOON

Life is a canvas stretched upon the frame of character and supported by the easel of time. You are the artist. The mind is the palette upon which you mix the colours, which are your thoughts. Your words and deeds are the brushes with which you paint, little words of kindness, little deeds of love, and little act of self sacrifice, are the artful touches which send so much to make your picture of life beautiful and pleasing.

Capturing the beauty of life, Preethi Hapuwatte has filled many sheets of canvas with oil paints. Collection of these paintings gave life to Hapuwatte's latest exhibition `Moments'. "I started having nothing in mind but ended up filling canvas after canvas with oil colour until I was satisfied. These are my life experiences with people and land in different places," Hapuwatte said.

The beauty of the life experiences which lingered in the mind of the artist now adorn the walls of the Barefoot Gallery. According to Hapuwatte these paintings have been done during a period of twelve months. “I started this collection of paintings in 2010. I did 28 paintings for this exhibition,” she said.

Tracing the way back to her childhood, Preethi says she was naturally attracted to artistic things in a creative household that included her engineer father and architect brother.

“I cannot say how I started to paint. It was always a kind of present necessity but it was rarely expressed and it was definitely repressed at home. I really started to draw regularly in Sri Lanka as I stayed in a temple and studied Buddhism. I first started to draw lines in black and golden ink to fill in the lonely time and then to imprint simple Buddhist stories, the Hindu gods, their symbols, vehicles and consorts in my mind. Studying Buddhism led me to the world of pre-Buddhist India and its gods, opening an inner universe which never left me,” she said. Hapuwatte says not only her mind but also her hands were restless until the images of God Shiva, Shivaism or Tantra found form on the paper.

“Studying Arabic and Hebrew opened my mind to new oppositions, new worlds, new symbolisms and energies. I wanted to express them in my most recent paintings, but these new influences upon touching the paper and in spite of myself were once again transformed through the prism of Shiva and Tantra as if at the end they were only one,” she added.

Hapuwatte has been working as a designer at Barefoot,since 1972 under Barbara Sansoni, to whom she was apprenticed in her early years. Preethi has had ten solo and twenty Group exhibitions since 1994. Preethi’s work has included assignments by Hemas House, Pheonix Clothing, Ceylinco Seylan Towers and The Millennium Art Collection in the Netherlands.

Hapuwatte says she paints for herself and for her happiness. Yet in doing that she brings a world joy to the viewers of her paintings. "I find it hard to reply when people ask me why I paint what I paint. I am a self taught artist and I have chosen not to take classes neither to study any particular techniques but to let it be and evolve as it comes,” she says.

“I have thousands of teachers in my art: the clouds and the way they move, the rain and the way it falls, the thousand of colors and details that catch my attention in the streets; the paintings by other painters and probably every moment and every act of life is a teacher for my art in one way or another,” Hapuwatte added.

Talking about `Moments' which is currently on going at the Barefoot Gallery, she says the paintings to refer a moment in time. “We should also take a moment to appreciate ourselves and our relationships before they are gone, we tend to miss so many beautiful moments” she said inviting the public view her paintings that will surely add colour to their lives.

Moments will be showcased at the barefoot gallery no.704, Galle road, Colombo 3 until June 24 on week days and Saturdays from 10 am to 7 pm and on Sundays and on poya days from 11 am to 5 pm.