Passionate about earthy textures
Shaanea Mendis D’Silva’s earliest memories are of the kind we’d love to have. “We had a large garden at the back as well as in front where my brother and I and sometimes our neighbours would play in,” she remembers of her childhood home in the suburbs of Colombo. “Snakes were a
Shaanea. Pic by Thishya Weragoda
regular sighting. Basically, interacting with our natural surroundings was an everyday affair. Observing the life of ‘dhimiyas’ was a past time for my brother at the time, and I’d potter around the garden observing in detail the intricacies of nature with the wide eyed enthusiasm of a child.”
Today Shaanea is a full time artist and her work is dreamy, abstract and strongly inspired by her surroundings. Meditating on the notion that “everything around us, including us, are made up of the tiniest, minute particles,” she is on the cusp of her second gallery exhibition in Colombo with ‘Cellscapes’ at the Lionel Wendt art gallery.
It has almost become her new artistic identity, she tells us over an email interview. “It’s abstract, and is inspired by intricate details, textures from nature, marks left on surfaces through time. Like the textural patterning on skin, tree bark surfaces, or the intricate vein patterns of a leaf. Imaginary biological cell formations. It’s meditative in process as well as viewing.”
Shaanea was a student of Ladies College Colombo and later studied at Lasalle College of Arts in Singapore, where she pursued Fine Art with a major in painting.
Her mother Oranea was naturally artistic- “we always had her paintings hanging around the house which I always aspired to”- and Shaanea says that this coupled with heavy artistic influence (she was taught at the Cora Abraham Art School and by Shyamala Pinto Jayawardena and Nadine David) made painting and drawing her favourite pastime growing up. “An art education has probably introduced me to a culture of contemporary art, conceptual art, and the difference between modern, post-modern and post-post modern art. Practicing and nurturing a skillset which was probably ingrained in me previously definitely taught me to think differently…to push my ideas a little bit further, even if it was beyond my comfort zone. I learned to critique as well as be critiqued constructively,” she enthuses of studying art at university level.
Following graduation Shaanea worked in fashion merchandizing in Singapore for three years and moved to her husband’s city Mumbai after marrying in 2011. As a marine engineer her husband Kevin spends a fair amount of time on the high seas and Shaanea often accompanies him. “Travelling the high seas allows me to shut out from the rest of the world and the distractions that normally come with being on land. I’ve never had as much peace of mind as when I am out at sea, and I paint while on board as well as back on land.”
Her first solo exhibition in 2012 at the Harold Pieris Gallery, Lionel Wendt was titled ‘Something Old, Something New, None are borrowed, Some are blue”. Shaanea has also participated in several showcases in Singapore, and has sold her work in Sri Lanka, India, the UK and Singapore.
Cellscapes found life with pen and ink drawings, then watercolour and “later evolved into working with rusting nails to bring out the rust stains on to paper or canvas, to create the same earthy textural effects that I am attracted to,” she says. “But now there is the added element of chance and the outcome being not entirely in my control-I’m leaving it to nature’s way.”
‘Cellscapes’ is at the Lionel Wendt Art Gallery from
May 16-18.