Joy of train rides and solitude on one platform
Pathum Gamage: Maiden exhibition
Pathum Gamage is a railway aficionado and his life is woven around the rail track. In his debut exhibition now at the Paradise Road Galleries, the canvases depict old colonial railway stations — those ornate arches, black benches and pale ochre brick and stone buildings from the 1800s.
Pathum, now 36, came to Colombo in 2008 and studied a four-year course at the Vibhavi Art Academy. He was bitten by the train-bug at this time. He would travel to Kandy just to sketch the many cool Victorian stations dotting the way.
Originally from Elpitiya, the young artist has two other motifs that are present in all his canvases – hora seeds and a mystery woman (who could be Pathum’s own ‘dark lady’, for all that he reveals to me!).
The first, the hora seed, the winged little helicopter that is a born survivor, is an emblem from his youth. His school, Karandeniya Central College, had a massive soaring Hora tree, and the little airborne seed became for Pathum a symbol of a vagabond but also solitude – two things, just like the railway station, that characterize him.
The mystery woman is a solitary figure. However crowded and bustling the station he paints is, Pathum only has on his canvas a few isolated figures – amongst them the dark lady in whose palms nestle the hora seed. He airbrushes most of the people en masse.
His mother being a housewife and his father a builder, young Pathum too would come up for occasional stays in Colombo. The Lionel Wendt was one place that captured his imagination.
Railway journeys: Capturing emotions
After graduating from Vibhavi, the train sagas became a daily routine for Pathum. He captures the brief mooring places of the yakada yaka trundling its way upcountry or northward or down the south coast.
Today, Pathum lives in Kandy. Travel and solitude are the main themes of his life and art. Nothing for him can match the high of traveling light and anonymous on a train – as the breeze slaps your face and the vistas of mountain, bridges, seas and forests – pass by.
While he does not crowd his canvas with each of the hundreds that commute daily– he does study each person intently.
He enjoys being able to display many emotions and states ‘on the same platform’- essentially putting together so many ‘worlds’.
“Take the Fort station for example – there you get a multitude of humans from different milieu and races- some daily commute together and converse; most have never met the others…”
Pathum loves to explore the baggage coach as well. He, in fact uses sacking and other coarse materials used for transport, and draws from their colour theme- browns, blacks, dirty yellows…
Pathum tells me that he doesn’t have a ‘large political vision’. Apart from celebrating the ‘spirituality of solitude’ he wishes that his art would bring solace to the dispirited, disturbed and disoriented.
Pathum’s exhibition, titled A Journey Within, is on at the Paradise Road Galleries from April 11 to May 8, from 10 a.m. till midnight.
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