They are not just pretty pictures. Emo-tions always compel her to start a painting and it’s the background colour that represents her emotion.
This is how the work of young artist Saashya Rodrigo has been described by Dr. Shamil Wanigaratne, an art collector and author of George Claessen: Artist, Sculptor and Poet (Paradise Isle Publications, UK 2000) who has been an avid collector of her works from the inception.
A solo exhibition of paintings by Saashya will be held for a month at Bayleaf, starting on July 24.
Saashya is an artist with, “a natural talent who projects her thoughts and feelings in impressionistic and abstract work depicting everyday Sri Lankan scenes”, explains Dr. Wanigaratne.
Saashya, who has just completed her A/Levels at The Study, has been putting brush to canvas since the age of eight and debuted at a group exhibition with the students of Latiffa Ismail where she gained her foundation. Her works are primarily oils on canvas with some in acrylic and mixed media and have been described as having a vibrant sense of colour.
“Painting is a world I could get lost in and of these fugue states, I get inspired to produce some creative work,” says Saashya. Largely impressionistic, she has veered into abstraction but not distortion, eschewing commercialisation in any form. “Everyday scenes are my greatest influence – it could be people around me, incidences I live with or even just myself. The images that spill out are the unique colours of my emotions.”
Her work has been influenced to some extent by European medieval paintings, great masters in the west, the ’43 Group’s George Claessen and Sri Lankan artists Jagath Weerasinghe, Shehan Madawela and Druvinka, according to Dr. Wanigaratne.
Saashya has sold at Kala Pola, the Senaka Senanayake Gallery at Cinnamon Grand Colombo and to private collectors in Canada, the US, London and India.
Her first group exhibition at the Lionel Wendt Art Gallery when she was just 10 years old sparked off the need to fund-raise for good causes.
Those funds have been utilised to build a house for a disabled soldier. She has also donated some of her paintings to Samutthana, the King’s College London Resource Centre for Trauma, Displacement and Mental Health and for which two other works were also auctioned at a UK-Sri Lanka fundraising dinner. |
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