A freewheeling artist
Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed is how you see Suresh Nissanka Weerathunga. Deep into his art, however, you will see a seemingly serious approach that speaks of personal focus.
He is thin, although lithe would be nicer put. He has an angular, Modigliani body. In later years his now youthful beard will be grey and pointed. And he will still be tilting at artistic windmills. Now at the age of 27 he is dynamism personified.
His is the only laptop you will be likely to see that is spattered with paint, because the laptop is only for his art. The writing of this young man’s life is written in the forms of his work.
Let’s see: there are works in clay (red terracotta and stoneware), metal, plastic, fibre, concrete, and combinations of them all. If there is anything that is not nailed down he will turn it into art. On the other hand, he will take a nail or a bolt and turn it into art, too. The paintings roll off his easel at a steady rate. There have been commissions for big hotels, room decorations and décor art. There is sacred work in the Tantric tradition to be seen in Buddhist temples. This obviously means murals – lots and lots of murals!
Ingenious! Picasso personified and with the same facility for producing such an eclectic, wildly diverse range of art. “But my favourite artists areVincent Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, and Paul Cézanne,” he says. “I can learn art from any artist and I use different influences for my work. I love to try different styles that improve my artistic skill and would like to try glass artwork, especially glass sculpture and glass painting.”
Born in Matara, Suresh is the son of modest and upright Buddhist parents. “I am therefore a Buddhist, but have a liking for all religions,” he maintains. His may be a humble family background but his parents had a good eye for art and the children seem to have tapped into a creativity gene. There are two sisters, both twins, at the University in Colombo learning visual and performing arts at the faculty of dancing. His mother and father were happy with a general atmosphere of creativity. But mother fostered the moral regime and there was to be no smoking or drinking.
Suresh runs on what must be the right side of his brain. Anyone tuned in this way will be noticing things that others do not and that means the creative potential of everything. Thus there is nothing in this world that cannot be given artistic expression. First come the sketches – then the realization – then the reshaping, the further expression of just about anything perceived.
The artistic view can be the beginning of all creativity. This is not to be learned, it is more a question of unlearning, of being aware and not a mental striving. The mind is in abeyance and the work involved is then undertaken in the conventional way. It is the making of the artist-craftsman. It is a startling approach to life in which the day to day things we use can be made into art.There are many tourists who return each year and make tracks to Suresh, and at the age of ten, tourists were coming to his home and buying his work. At the age of 14 he received his first certificate at Galle.
“I received Rs. 100,000 for a work that is now to be seen at a hotel at Kaburugamuwa.” There have been many clients among the hotels.
“My ceramics came into being through my studies for four years at the Colombo University of the Visual and Performing Arts. There was a Japanese lecturer named Yoko San who taught me a great deal about ceramics,” Suresh told me. Production has led to some ceramic earrings and necklaces of exquisite taste, together with some generally formal kitchenware.
Every form is contained in an unworked block of marble. The artist releases the form and that can be revealed through the mediums that Suresh has made his own. Ceramics – wood design – metal – fibre – rock art – mural paintings at Matara in the Buddhist temple, among others. Moreover, he has not been above T-shirt design. It is just another outlet for his freewheeling creativity.
There is an ingenious and astonishingly adept piece made from two metal bolts to form a mother and child. His paintings on wood show a flow of design that is all about décor art, but with a special something that is all his own. The images here tell it all.
Suresh Weerathunga can be reached at: weerathunga.art@gmail.com
Mother and child and inset, the artist and above some of his other work