Vintage Marie Alles F.
A tea estate Madonna: One of her favourites
Marie Alles Fernando is getting ready for her latest exhibition, titled Made in Colour, rather special to her because it features for the first time her ‘vintage collection’ – scenes of the then newly built Randenigala reservoir seen from the cool garden of an estate bungalow – when she was a young planter’s bride.
These are pristine landscapes; mountains sketched in greens, purples and blues where a feathery kitul tree can suddenly spring to great heights, mists undulate like veils, evergreen woods cling to hills and islands gleam luminously. Her colours are her calling card.
Amongst the new canvases is her current favourite – Mary Mother of Lanka, a Madonna who resembles an estate Tamil woman with a child and crimson-hearted frangipani flowers.
Daughter of Genevieve Edirisinghe, an artist herself and on her father’s side, a ‘Horton Place Alles’, Marie was tutored by Douglas Amarasekere and Ivor Baptiste before going on to America for master classes.
As we chat in her Nawala house, where she is framed against a classic French window with stained glass, beyond which in the garden a giant Attikka tree is sending down swirling yellow leaves, I absorb Marie’s charisma – her sometimes self-deprecating humour, impish jokes and wholehearted laughter…
Early work: Randenigala landscape
At the core of her art is Impressionism which first took artists away from studios in the 1860s, says Marie. She always paints in nature, ‘on the spot’, returning to her studio only for finishing touches.
She confesses that she is still pleasantly tired from a trip to New York where she was on a pilgrimage of sorts, visiting many museums and galleries including the Metropolitan Museum of Art where she viewed Van Gogh with adulation.
“I go for inspiration- because there’s nothing like seeing the real masterpiece- it’s not like looking into a book- and seeing a print. You have to see the textures, the colours in their true form.”
Marie Alles Fernando
While inspired by Buddhism, Marie is a devout Roman Catholic. It is with enthusiasm she speaks about The Chosen, the hit TV series her eldest son Ruwan ‘made her see’. “I watched it and my life just changed… Now my faith has gone even deeper.” She was struck by the way director Dallas Jenkins worked with the traditional Bible story.
“He has juxtaposed things in such a remarkable way, one feels so much part of the film, part of the life of Christ, Mary, Mary Magdalene, the 12 disciples and how hard a life they had…”
This is part and parcel of the deep spirituality that you see in all her canvases, whether it is the tea estate Madonna, the serene, amorphous paintings of Bolgoda Lake with glowing cerise lotuses, or Galle’s composite soul sweeping across ages with the VOC emblemed gateway to the fort, the Dutch church and peacocks and temples all in one canvas.
Spirituality, increasing with age feeds her soul, and keeps her going. “I have gone through so much, (but) I am still painting- and still travelling to faraway places…”
Entrance to her exhibition on December 1 is by invitation only.
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