Island inspiration
Yashara’s watercolour Achchi
Yashara Wikramasurendra vividly remembers the handpainted mural of a fairytale jungle with blossoming flowers and multi-hued rainbows that stretched across her bedroom walls. The mural was painted by her mother whom she credits as one of her biggest influences and she had painted a fresh scene when Yashara turned three. So fresh is it in her memory that Yashara is certain she can recreate it, even today, years later.
Despite growing up in a creative environment Yashara never thought she would end up pursuing art as a career as people seldom considered it a viable vocation while she was in school, she points out. Undeterred, she studied the subject for both her Ordinary Level and Advanced Level exams but it was only after she began teaching fresh out of school that she began to strive towards an artistic career. Leaving behind her aspirations of becoming a professional dancer following 14 years of classical training in ballet, she now holds a Higher National Diploma in Visual Communication and a teaching diploma. A full-time illustrator and artist, she paints in acrylics and watercolours, doing digital and traditional illustrating, mosaic art and sculpting while also designing.
Yashara’s Independence Day 2022 sketch
Small Island Artist her online business, originated as a way to document her process online in 2019. The name, she explains, was chosen to reflect her primary influence – Sri Lankan culture. “I wanted it to have something to do with our local little ecosystem.” Much of her illustrations depict fixtures of Lankan society like Raksha masks with bulging eyes and protruding tongues and puttering red three-wheelers.
Also appearing frequently in her work are dark skinned women with curly or textured hair in richly detailed sarees or other traditional clothing. These ‘aunties’ as she calls them in her online posts, she says she couldn’t help but admire in her life, drawn to the embellished sarees, vibrant local textiles and handloom products made here. She says, “I feel like there’s a lack of representation of brown communities, even here in the storybooks you read. It was very important to me to find that niche and explore that because I just don’t see it enough.”
Aside from commissions for custom artwork, Yashara also makes puzzles: 250- and 600-piece jigsaw puzzles with her personalized custom-made illustrations. Spurred by her own fondness for jigsaw puzzles, she decided to incorporate these into her product range as she wanted to see more local artwork on jigsaws. They have rapidly become popular and she hopes to release her own range with her original artwork on them.
Jigsaw: Aunties in the garden
Her other passion, teaching, goes hand in hand with her love for art. Now a guest lecturer at the Academy of Design, she initially taught younger students. “You know how you have that great teacher in school and you want to do so well in that subject because that teacher is so good? I always wanted to be that teacher for other kids. I felt that every child needs that one teacher. If I can be there for at least one person, I think I’ve done a good job,” she says.
As an illustrator, her work has also been featured in projects by NGOs such as the Centre for Equality and Justice. In one such project, Yashara illustrated a series of interviews which showcased the stories of survivors of the 2018 riots in Digana. Yashara recalls how she would view the raw, unedited footage of the interviews, a ‘very emotional experience’ and take great care to ensure that she depicted these stories in an uplifting way.
She says of similar projects, “Even though these stories can be so sad – people who’ve lost their homes and people who’ve been abused, I have to take all of that and still somehow make it not just about that one incident, it’s about the rest of their lives and how they build from that trauma.”
Yashara Wikramasurendra
Frequently on stage while in school, Yashara also revisits her passion for theatre doing stage make-up. Productions of the Workshop Players and others will find her busy backstage, putting the final touches to the actors’ make-up, a skill she taught herself since having to do her own make-up while acting in school production. This too has kept her busy in a semi-professional capacity for the past five years.
Now, Yashara says that she’s busy readying her series of watercolours and acrylic paintings for her very first exhibition of her original works.
Visit her page, Small Island Artist on Instagram: small_island_artist
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