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| Sunday, 16 October 2005 |
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Best of Cora de Lang by Aditha Dissanayake A name? Cora de Lang re-questions me with raised eye-brows, seated in her spacious sitting room with the soft sounds of Nigerian music playing in the background with her cats Lucky, snoozing on a chair and Gino disappearing after giving me a military like scrutiny, shrugs her shoulders and breaks into a disarming smile.
Water? Yes. But the fact that there is a lot of water and a lot of blue does not mean the paintings now hanging on the walls of the Barefoot Gallery have anything to do with the tsunami. "Only one painting did I do of the tsunami" says Cora, pointing to a picture titled "White Lotus". But gazing at the one called "Offering" which she had done in Mexico, before December 26, 2004, she says, now, in retrospect, this painting could be described as an offering to the sea. Born in Argentina, having lived in Germany, Nigiria, Spain and India, her paintings portray how she has absorbed the cultural nuances of her adopted countries. Her taste for earth colours obviously comes from Africa while India vouch for the spiritual content. Never drawing a sketch before she starts to paint, Cora trusts her inner voice and paints "Something that comes to mind", straight onto the canvas. Often it's a case of painting first and trying to describe or analyze what she had painted, later. Thus in "The Answer" four faces inside an oracle are surrounded by "thoughts and possibilities". In "Matrimonial Bond" womankind is depicted by a turtle carrying her family on her own. "Life inspires her to paint. "I was painting since I was a little kid. My mother recalls how she used to prepare me and my brother for bed every night. She'd wash me first because she knew while she washed my brother I would be painting. I was a peaceful kid". Moving onto more serious territory Cora says "From my childhood I saw myself often in an imaginary film. I dreamt of becoming an artist; I experienced myself in this "film" expressing my feelings, dreams and stories by painting. I dived into this world of fantasy, where strange creatures and magic animals dominated the landscape, where everything was possible". Always fascinated by other races and beliefs, curious to know more about them, Cora who had depicted her "philosophy" about travel in her painting called "Columbus" hopes that through this exhibition, she will be able to reach out to the people of Sri Lanka, because she sees her exhibitions as open doors through which something good always walks in. Listening to her confiding in me, who till then had been a complete stranger, I realise how true are the words she had written on her website about herself. "I experienced encounters with souls of old friends dressed in different races, speaking different languages - coined by their immediate natural surroundings, but nevertheless so naturally known to me". She was treating me too instinctively, as an old friend, naturally known to her. For someone who does not measure time and space in hours and miles but in happy or sad, long or quick episodes, Cora's paintings naturally breakaway from the monotony of ordinary life. Grey buildings, grey people, grey streets which kill inspiration and enthusiasm are not for her, for she dislikes averaegness and imprisonment, and seeks freedom through her paintings. Having had the wind and the rain, the sun and the sounds beating on her face in four continents, Cora says her footsteps are heavy with her increasing load of memories and deeds of dreams and projects, but that she will never stop this "pilgrimage through different continents and cultures" till she reaches the last truth within herself." Till then, she is happy doing what she likes doing the most in the world-painting. The exhibition now on at the Barefoot Gallery continues till November, 2. |
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"No, I haven't given a name to this exhibition. Some of the paintings
were done while I was in Mexico, some were painted here. But even though I
haven't given a name to the exhibition there is a theme to the paintings -
water". 
