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| Sunday, 2 October 2005 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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Alex Stewart's Golden Skies by Aditha Dissanayake
Alex brings the cigarette to his lips again and inhales deeply. I try to imagine those same fingers holding a paint brush and creating the paintings now hanging on the walls of the Barefoot gallery. Alex Stewart may not remember how many exhibitions he has held in Sri Lanka so far, but his paintings vouchsafe how sensitive he has been in noticing the nuances of daily life around him. From the angel dressed in the traditional osari in "Monument" to the dog snoozing under a lorry in "Unloading rice" the pictures are bewitching for their simplicity. Having travelled all over Sri Lanka after the tsunami, Alex says through this years exhibition he tries to show how Sri Lankans have begun to recover from the tragedy on boxing day 2004. A dabbler who worked in cafes and pubs and was in the music scene before he started painting, Alex recalls his first painting done in 1992 - a still life picture of a bowl of cherries. The creative phase is the most important stage of painting for him and he admits that there are times when painting could be frustrating or even boring, like when he has to paint all the leaves on a tree. But its rewarding too and he can't imagine a life without painting. Alex sees his wife of twenty-five-years, Lizzi, who is also a painter he met on a blind date, as his source of inspiration. Refusing to see himself as eccentric or temperamental as artists are supposed to be, he nevertheless admits he would never fit into an office job. Having looked at the paintings there is one final question to ask Alex. Is he happy with what he has created?. He takes time to reply. Stubbing the cigarette on the ash tray as if to add emphasis to what he is about to say, he says "No. I'm never satisfied with any of my paintings. If I were to create the perfect picture, there would be no point in continuing". But to any connoisseur of art, the pictures now hanging at the Barefoot Gallery would seem perfect. The exhibition ends on October 9, 2005. ########## Brush strokes of peace in Sri Lanka
The Secretariat for Coordinating the Peace Process (SCOPP) together with the Peace Education Division of the Ministry of Education commemorated the International Day of Peace on September 21 as declared by the United Nations with the inauguration of a child art exhibition on the theme 'Brush strokes of Peace in Sri Lanka'. The exhibition was inaugurated by Dr. Lester James Peiris and Mrs. Sumithra Peiris at the Lional Wendt Art Gallery in Colombo on September 21 which ran for three days. SCOPP conducted an Island wide school art competition to which over seven hundred entries were received from school children of all communities in Sri Lanka between the ages of 10 and 15 years. A panel of four judges selected seventy-five entries to be exhibited of which six were prize winning paintings. The six winners were: 1st Place - Saduni Wimansa Jayasekera (Age 12) Dharmasoka Viduhala, Galle. 2nd Place - Yalini Shanmuganathan (Age 15) Wembadi Girls High School, Jaffna. 3rd Place - Ranasinghe Arachige Viraj Madushanka (Age 10), Udabadalawa Sudarshana Maha Vidyalaya, Kurunegala. 4th Place - Fathima Nusna (Age 15), Fergusson Girls High School, Ratnapura. 5th Place - M. M. Irfan (Age 14) Osmanya College, Jaffna. 6th Place - Sivabalan Kushaliyan (Age 13) St. John's College, Jaffna. |
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"This is my sixth or seventh exhibition here" says Alex Stewart, (the
self-taught artist and not the ex-batsman cum wicket-keeper) seated at the
open air cafe at Barefoot. I watch the smoke from his cigarette curl towards
the trees above us and think, "he is committing suicide and murdering me
with his smoke". 
