Kalapathi Vasantha Rathnayake :

Beauty of nature enriches his creations

An academic painter who is able to express himself well, with a complete understanding of its possibilities and limitations is a very rare person and a fortunate one. Such a painter is Kalapathi Vasantha Rathnayake. He hails from Maho in the district of Kurunegala. Vasantha was born in the village of Maho on January 9, 1974. As a boy he grew up in the typical surroundings of a Sri Lankan village. The beauty of nature and the villagers in their simple lifestyle enriched Vasantha’s artistic creativity. He received his early education at Vijayaba National College where he was encouraged by his art teacher to participate in group art exhibitions in school.

Education

After completing his A at the Ballalla Maha Vidyalaya he joined the University of Performing and Visual Arts, Colombo and obtained his B.F.A. Degree special in 2001. In the university he had the privilege of studying under reputed painters such as D.W. Somaratne and Prof. Sarath Chandrajeeva who helped him to turn out creative paintings and sculpture. In 2009 Vasantha obtained his postgraduate diploma in education at the Open University Colombo.

One of his sculptures

Kalapathi Vasantha Rathnayake

He has worked as an Art Director at the Sirasa T.V. Sithampana program and as a make-up artist in Sirasa TV for two years. He designed Sri Lankan stalls for several international exhibitions, at the world tourism exhibition in Germany 2003, in China in 2004 and participated in the World Tourism Exhibition in France in 2007 organised by the Tourist Board of Sri Lanka. Vasantha’s fingers are fashioned for the creation of beauty. The lyrical quality of his sculpture is evident in his creations.

Asset

In Sri Lanka his creations are seen outside the Sri Lanka Telecom Office, ‘Receiver with hand’, the Rev. Gangodawila Soma Thera at the Maharagama Buddhist Vihara, and other distinguished personalties in the country. His creations also include waterfalls and landscaping. Every tree, flower and tuft of grass are brought out with precision that shows Vasantha’s sensitiveness to nature. His outstanding asset as a painter is his dedication to his work. The variety of media in which he works is oil and acrylic in projecting his vision using various techniques and styles.

He turns the dark moody browns, yellow and ultra marine blues in his own imagination. A perfect blending of colours baffles art lovers. He artistically records village life, the sufferings of humanity and realistic scenes of everyday life. It is as though he saw the people and places of his pictures completely in his mind’s eye, with such sharp, final definition, that all he required was to transfer them, without modification and without embellishment, to his canvas. Not only landscape paintings, he also painted fine portraits and made a series of portrait drawings of remarkable beauty. A member of the Ceylon Society of Arts, Vasantha served as an art instructor at the Ceylon Society of Arts in sculpture and painting for three years. He has also held the post of Education Secretary in the Society.

For his longstanding service he was awarded ‘Kalapathi’ by the Ceylon Society of Arts, Colombo.

To impart his knowledge and skill to the younger generation he now teaches at the Arawwala Vidyaloka and Sunandopananda Vidyalaya.