Where nature looms large over man
View(s):- Young artist Sandatharaka Abeysinghe’s hyperrealist paintings hark back to growing up
in the misty hill country and a brush with a Russian classic painting
By Yomal Senerath-Yapa
Sandatharaka’s art, hyperrealist and colourful, harks back to two main influences. The first, his native village which conjured in his imagination a dream world along with shades of an old European fairytale, such as we see on his canvases.
Sandatharaka Abeysinghe’s (featured on the cover page) dream-like paintings
He schooled at the Poramadulla Central College and completed his BFA in Visual Arts at the University of Visual and Performing Arts, Colombo, in 2019.
His father he says was a goldsmith and his artistic skills were probably passed on; adding with laughter, “I have read of many artists whose fathers happened to be goldsmiths.”
A damascene moment and the other main influence for him was first locking eyes with the classic painting titled Sadko by the Russian painter Ilya Repin in 2018. This painting, to do with the epic Russian poem where a musician called Sadko goes to the bottom of the sea where he befriends the Sea Tsar, gave Sandatharaka ‘a shock’ with its strange underwater light where Slavic fairy creatures flock together like in an opulent dream in some forgotten underwater summer palace.
Then on, he would mostly paint an underwater world though with embellishments of Lankan culture like a miniature perahera elephant here or a tiny vihara with a stupa there.
The art now up on the walls of the Saskia Fernando Gallery is a juxtaposition of nature with humans, nature that is dark, cold, wintry and faerie-like mostly dwarfing the humans.
There are other canvases where giant lush vegetation is predominant over tiny humans and Sandatharaka’s main theme whether in the ‘underwater world’ or other art seems to be how puny man is pitted against the whole of nature.
For Sandatharaka, this is only the beginning. He hopes to delve deeper into the underwater world and also share his knowledge of oil painting techniques as a teacher.
‘Elsewhere’, Sandatharaka Abeysinghe’s exhibition is on at the Saskia Fernando Gallery from October 24 till November 14, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
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