Art review

Is art for art’s sake?

Tissa Hewavitarane

There exists however, artists of a different kind, who are not versatile and whose work changes little. Artists who early in their lives discover a single, elusive preoccupation. Amarasena’s painting became looser and more emphatic as the years passed, but the subject is more evident still.

Amarasena’s consistency of aim and method is more obvious did not change. Amarasena has his own individual identity. His seventh art exhibition recently held, proved his ability whose love his own craft on canvas at the Lionel Wendt.

He hails from Navimana South a hamlet in Matara. Being a man of rural background, is a lover of nature who transform the rural life into to modern forms. Amarasena’s tale of painting goes back, to a quiet but edifying childhood in the Southern village scribbling on little scraps of paper picked at random. With many experienced of having many exhibitions he has come a long way in depicting nature transformed into abstract forms.

Amarasena has created pictures that tell a story. “Art for art sake” is to him a meaningless phrase. A picture that didn’t tell a story is as incongruous as a sentence that didn’t contain a subject and a predicate. Amarasena has used moderate colour combination in mixing his orange with his purple, his flaming yellows with his dazzling green. He had expressed the terrible passions of humanity by red and dark yellow and with a glow of orange and green.

Some of his paintings titled ‘the bathers’ (the village bellies with transparent dress to give the curves a greater appeal dipped in water). The ‘Kandyan perahera’ flamboyant colours showing deep red and yellow, depicting the wind swept flames of the torchbearers. “The raban dancers” (a set of teenage girls dressed in creamy white, in rhythmic movements.

Most striking feature was the ‘Narilatha’ done, using mixed media acrylic and oil. (a tantalizing exposure of a semi nude woman with moderate colour combination of purple, pink, orange and green. He had done series of pictures entitled “a rich harvest”, ‘relaxation,’ “burden of life”, ‘seeking end’ which represent the decline and death. These paintings are either abstractions or semi abstractions. The integration of colour, line and from is vibrant and powerful.

His pictures tend to a voluptuous and decorative display of bodies and colours. His subtle blues and pale yellow are applied in perfect balance with the warm colours on background. Amarasena employs unusually different tones to create strong shadows and in so doing brings effective contrast to produce coloured facades. Beautiful as many of his pictures are, in which so much of the subject is described by sober monochrome washes.

I think his most intransigently abstract works that his reputation will finally depend.

Abstract art is even justified according to some critics, as a fruit of the spiritual life. Where the spectator not mystified or provoked by cosmic or metaphysical claims when abstract art is in question, he would have little difficulty in discerning the good qualities in the best, and in that of Amarasena in particular. Once his paintings are seen in the serenely harmonious arrangements of rectangles and circles, calculated with beautiful precision, exquisite in finish, elegant in style, and its appeal as being addressed to the universal delight in such relations between forms.

A visit to the exhibition of Amarasena Kodituwakku abstracts affords something of the same kind of pleasure as a visit to a well-designed luxury yacht – about both there is the same exhilarating sense of things being streamlined, well made light and fresh. It is the sharp singing colour, the precise and subtle sense of relations between forms and the freshness that mark Amarasena at his happiest.

For one reason or another it is expected today that art should be the expression of an individual, and neither artists nor public is willing that it should take the place as part of the background of living. Having experimented with various colour effects. Yet it in the proper understanding of Amarasena’s sensuality that we may find the clue to his art.

Amarasena is not merely sensual in the ordinary sense of the word. He is more than that - he is a genius who sublimated sensuality into beauty. For his loyalty and dedication as an art teacher Amarasena was awarded the prestigious Kalabooshana award in 1997. At present he is the Art Instructor at the Brilliant Star International College, Matara.

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