Biography

Hi and welcome to my collection of artwork.

Self taught, I have a deep love of art and my chosen style of medium is acrylic. I consider myself mainly an abstract artist who likes to paint in vibrant colours. I gather ideas constantly from things I see, textiles, landscapes, architecture, sculpture, photography, faces and the human body. Recently I introduced jewellery (gold earing) on a painting to give added interest to the pictorial.

Born in Ceylon , as Sri Lanka was known at the time, I grew up in a family of artists. My grandfather, who carried a drawing book on his travels overseas, would bring back memories of his trips in sketches and monotone drawings done in heavy pencil, of various statues, buildings, monuments and people, which were of exceptional quality. Manelle, my mother, too inherited her father’s qualities but it was in the form of free flow water colour paintings which she would do from time to time and on special occasions to bring happiness to some known person who would be in need of upliftment.

Since childhood, I found contentment when drawing and doodling and during these early stages, developed a liking to abstract forms of drawing. As a young adult, works of art continued to interest me and combinations of water colour and charcoal fascinated me as it was something I had not seen previously.

A great deal of interest was further generated by my mother in law, Mrs Punitham Tiruchelvam with her private collection of Art, which included works of George Keyt. Manjusri, Jamini Roy, among others. She also had a library of art books and a collection of Indian bronzes and other artifacts and was a wealth of knowledge in these fields of work and Hindu mythology and Indian literature on which I had little or no knowledge but within a few years I acquired sufficient knowledge on these subjects to generate a more ‘educated’ interest in art which blossomed out a few years later.

At first, the painting “New Woman” of George Keyt (Sri Lanka’s most distinguished and renowned modern painter) which was part of Punitham’s collection did not generate much interest within me but after seeing it displayed amidst many other Keyt paintings at one of Keyt’s exhibitions at the Colombo Art Gallery in the late seventies and being told of the ‘story’ behind and of the painting itself, I could not stop looking at that masterpiece in awe and a spark suddenly ignited within me and ever since then, I was fascinated by the works of Keyt, learning more about the artist himself and his style of work.

At the same time, I was introduced to George Bevan a vastly talented, self taught artist, living in London. Bevan mastered the technique of flicking Indian ink off a toothbrush on to cartridge paper to produce portraits. Described as the “Eastern Degas’ (hails from Sri Lanka) and dubbed the “Royal Painter” as he was commissioned to paint a portrait of Princess Margaret using the monotone technique, Bevan frequently uses his fingers to paint as he said it captured the movement of the painting and could feel it in his fingers, bringing the picture to life.

Having watched Bevan in action in his studio in London and Negombo, Sri Lanka and also being horrified seeing him suddenly destroy what seemed to be a brilliant piece of work; but, in his eyes something not to his liking, the spark that was lit inside me since the Geroge Keyt exhibition took hold strongly and before long, I started to experiment in painting and with the work of George Keyt being my driving force, began to practice doing copies and studies of his work to get a feel of how it was like to paint with acrylic, my preferred medium.

I seem to lean towards meditative poses and scenes of a serene nature at present and hope to widen the field of “feelings” in my future paintings and to introduce a bit of ‘cubism’ and other interesting facets to develop a style of my own.

Having recently retired from full time work, I plan to dive into the world of painting on a full time basis, to provide me with the thrill and joy of producing works of art, which imparts an uplifting feeling of peace and tranquility to mind, body and spirit.

Enjoy!