The painters’ experiences transformed to the viewers’ experience
The creative souls behind the endeavour called Catharsis are the latest generation of Sri Lankan artists.
At the exhibition held on April 24- 26 at the Lionel Wendt, they showed their colours.
To someone trying to understand them and their work, the title chosen for the exhibition will provide a clue. ‘Catharsis’, from Greek, means purification and purgation of emotions through art. As the five artists have jointly stated, painting for them is “a therapeutic exercise”.
“We transfer emotions onto canvas and detach them from ourselves. What remains on the canvas after the 
experience of creation is all the viewer will see and feel. It is the proof of our experience, of our existence.”
These five artists are graduates of the University of Visual and Performing Arts. The three female artists, Indika Samarajeewa, Chiranthi Gunesekera and Dulakshi Hettiarachchi, studied Visual Communication Design. Prasanna Dharma Sri studied sculpture, and Gayan Rathnayaka, painting.
While Prasanna Dharma Sri’s works of sculpture, pieces such as Vajra Man, stood sentinel-like in the middle of the hall, paintings by the four other artists studded the walls.
The artists have rid themselves of troubling emotions by creating these works. Though looking at the work we feel burdened, as if the worries on the brows of the artists have been transmitted to ours’, we also feel a whiff of the peace the artists achieved by creating the work; which makes us want to experience Catharsis ourselves by meddling with canvas or with bronze.