Spontaneous imagination

Sarala Jayasekera is one of those rosebuds awaiting a successful classical future within the aesthetic groves of painting in Sri Lanka. Even though her brush does not fall into the rationales of the worldwide traditions of painting, by following her mother, she has captured the basic two European classical styles of the modern era; the realistic and the abstract. This little sketch of an interview with her passes on the fragrance of her painting to art-loving audiences. You will catch a whiff of her blossoming from the Lionel Wendt Theatre on 16th, 17th and 18th .

 Question - How have you entered this arbor of painting on a canvas?

 Answer - I started at about the age of three. I should actually give credit to my mother who is a painter in her own style. She was the one who realized I have this talent, and first gave me the break to show my painting skills at an exhibition.

Thus the qualities of my style are mostly akin to hers, except in the subjects I choose. I tend to do mostly wildlife and landscape, which my mother very rarely does. On the other hand, my father also pushed me into this, for his mother (my grandmother) was also an artist. Consequently all of them stirred all my talents in painting on a canvas. As a whole, we take art as an impressionistic process.

Question - How would you define the difference between the realistic and abstract forms of painting?

Answer - When it comes to wildlife, I try to include each and every detail of the object. For example, when painting a leopard or a tree, I try to mark each and every spot on it as much as is possible for me.

Yet when I come to abstracts, I totally absorb in my own sense of perception or imagination. Basically when doing a background of a painting with oils, oils impart a different rhythm of light and darkness to it. Therefore when I finish with the background, only then do I think of brushing in the shades between light and darkness.

Then there is the ambience of filling an abstract canvas. That's how most of my abstract paintings came into being. Once you do a background, it pushes you along a particular path in bringing an abstract image out.

Thus in such a case, oil gives you an experimentally different color combination to finish it well. Other than that, I don't suppose I consciously encrypt any ideology in my paintings.

Because in abstract painting, only after painting it does one realize what it is. So it depends mostly on what it looks like to me at the particular moment I brush it. Yet when it comes to animals, it presents me totally different circumstances. There I like to keep the objects I paint real. Consequently it takes much longer to wrap up a realistic canvas.

Question - Do you follow a particular style or a tradition on your canvas ?

Answer - When it is come to oil, I mostly rely on an impressionistic style or a point of view. Actually my mother is also mostly an impressionistic painter. There you paint what you feel. And you don't feel any distance from your own painting.

Yet when it comes to the realistic style, I try to capture what it really looks like, and stick within its exact detail. There it is no impressionism, other than that practical relevance. So I haven't gone through a particular tradition or a style.

Each one of these painters in each tradition has an unique different style. Therefore it is so difficult to compare.

Question - Have you been inspired by any distant or local painters?

Answer - Mostly my mother, who taught me and directed me into this art, and all credit should go to her. Yet at the moment I am fascinated with wildlife, which my mother isn't involved in that much. I have tended to go in this direction.

Other than that, I haven't even heard of many foreign and local painters. Yet I'm sure every one of them has their own unique style!