Breaking free!
Ruwangi Amarasinghe is honest in a way few people are. She started her artistic career as a young tot on canvas, but qualified as a graphic designer. We ask her why-“because artists don’t always make money,” she grins. “I have to be able to make a living too!”
As an artist, Ruwangi’s work is primarily influenced by her friends, music and what she sees around her. A quick visit to her blog Mana Vimana provides a fascinating insight into the mind of an artist who seems to find delight in non-conformity. Her work is colourful, but not in that explosive rainbow-hued way you might imagine it to be. This is subtler, more restrained. There’s the cosmic owl, a transcendent looking thing in a suit, puffing calmly on a magenta pipe. Ruwangi’s art features animals in various guises frequently. “We’re all part animal,” she says. “The owl head, or cosmic owl, is a representation of how easy it is to get lost in our own heads.”
Perhaps it also stems from Saturday visits to the Dehiwala Zoo as a child, where she took part in her only formal artistic training ever as a member of a Young Zoologists group. “We would learn about the animals, and every Saturday we’d have an art class on how to draw them. So you could say I started with that.” She did this for a while before realising that she could draw anything, “absolutely anything” that she wanted to. Hailing from an artistic family (her grandfather was sculptor Ariyawansa Weerakkody) Ruwangi learnt to love drawing at a very young age, and worked with her uncle-another artist-to master the finer points of the craft.
She studied science subjects in school-they didn’t let her do both science and art in school-and following graduation joined the Academy of Design to study graphic design. She loves both her work on canvas and other physical forms, and graphic design too for the more precise, commercially viable creative outlet it provides her. As a freelance illustrator (“I could never, ever in a million years settle down to do a 9-5 job,” she says), Ruwangi is frequently commissioned to design posters, advertisements, children’s book covers and installation pieces.
Recently she entered into a competition that chose a handful of young artists to paint the car park of the newly opened Cinnamon Red hotel in Colombo 2. Her work here is striking; a fox in a business suit perched on a massive blue bird, a lady bird chilling in the back in a bikini, a cat dozing on the clouds…it took her three days to complete and hours in front of her computer prior, illustrating it on Photoshop. “I like to plan whatever I’m doing down to the last line, with colours, on Photoshop before I actually paint it,” she explains. “This gives me direction and makes life so much easier when I’m actually painting!” Her brother sat with her for the duration of those three days with this illustrated copy in his hands, directing her with the precision of a military general as she outlined and filled in her work.
While she primarily works solo, Ruwangi belongs to a group known as Bang Bang, a collective of creative souls who find inspiration from each other. She knows the struggles of trying to survive as a young artist all too well; “it’s difficult to find people who will consistently support you, or buy your work.” Ruwangi hopes these things will change, because “more young people need to take part seriously in local art.” Soon, she hopes to take part in an artist exchange programme, or just travel abroad purely for art’s sake. “I was in London recently and the street art scene there is amazing,” she enthuses. “Hopefully Sri Lanka can also move in the same direction soon.”