Dinusha Uthpala Upasena :

Work of art with inimitable taste and colour

Dinusha Upasena hails from Panadura, a town where the intellectual elite of the time, particularly, journalists, musicians, artistes, poets and skilled craftsmen were born.

As a little boy, Dinusha grew up in a house where there was ardent interest for painting, sculpture, leather and wood work. He hails from a family of artistes and craftsmen.

His father M.T.G. Upasena was a lecturer at the University of Visual and Performing Arts who had expertise in wood carving, while his mother Chitra Perera lectured on leather work.

As a child Dinusha was determined to follow in the footsteps of his parents and his passion for creativity, perseverance and dedication paved the way for him to enter the University of the Visual and Performing Arts.

Dinusha had his early education at the Panadura Sri Sumangala Boys’ School. He acquired his basic lessons in creating works and art from his father and leather work designing and experiments with different techniques from his mother. His exploration of different medium and interest in skin texture and colour inspired Dinusha to study goatskin as a form of experimentation. Armed with a degree in Fine Arts he participated in many group exhibitions on a variety of subjects such as still life, portraits, line drawing and life drawing.

To quench his thirst to gain artistic maturity, in 2004 Dinusha enrolled as a part-time student to study advanced figurative and sculpture and painting at the Vibavi Academy of Fine Arts. In 2011 he obtained a postgraduate Diploma in Archaeology at the University of Kelaniya and followed a leather design course, at the Department of Industries.

From 1999-2002 Dinusha completed a three-year design course at the National Design Centre, Moratuwa. His intense search and experiments resulted in a succession of human figures that feature the characteristic of his mature work. His subjects reflect a degree of abstraction. His works are of an inimitable taste and colour, decidedly his own. From time to time Dinusha painted landscapes with a frank and tasteful felicity. Under strong impulses his art moved towards an abstraction which was eventually at its most characteristic form. Dinusha held many successful exhibitions and won several awards. His paintings depict human figures and their interactions with the surroundings. His paintings portray human suffering. His technique remains the same with a rare accomplishment combined with a subtle sense of form and luminosity. Dinusha’s vision is lucid and uninterrupted. The directness and intensity of concentration of his subjects is conspicuous in his oils and also by his work in a variety of other media.

Dinusha said, “My work is deeply influenced by Raphael, Rembrandt and Lucian Freud, especially by Rembrandt’s intense colours and fast brush strokes which are characteristics of both his work and that of Lucian Freud. In all my paintings, I have tried to create a rich visual image.

When I first started, I concentrated on figurative art and gradually I felt the need to express my admiration for the work of many artistes, particularly Freud and Rembrandt, which led me to explore their techniques and draw the creations to develop my own individual style. My challenge is to make the world feel the depth of my interpretation of what my eyes see and inner self feel”.

An exhibition of Dinusha’s present works is now on at the Lionel Wendt Gallery.