Chronicles of love
By Kalakeerthi Edwin Ariyadasa
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Jayasiri Semage |
“Love is composed of a
single soul, inhabiting two bodies”.
Aristotle (384-323 BC)
“A flower cannot
blossom without sunshine and man cannot live without love”.
- Max Muller.
“Painting is a blind
man's profession. He paints not what he sees but what he feels. In a
painting he tells us about what he has felt.”
- Pablo Picasso
He strides along armed with his skilled brush. To accompany him, he
has a multi-lined palette. A waiting and eager, but blank, canvas
confronts him. A distinguished creative encounter ensues. The climactic
triumph is his.
The canvas has yielded. It has without much struggle accepted his
visions, vistas, ideals, feelings, sensations, urges and his thoughts
and philosophies. Decked in the monochrome or multi-coloured garb he has
given the canvas beams.
He is creatively joyous.
His fervent, ardent aficionados exult.
Lovers of art experience an aesthetic thrill.
And, he strides on towards yet another creative encounter.
Given all that, who is this ‘he'?
I will name him: Jayasiri Semage – artist-cum-aesthetic
pilgrim-cum-explorer of the domain of human love. This is, his latest
phase of imaginative voyaging.
Jayasiri Semage deserves an urgent, fresh and in-depth assessment, as
a distinguished presence in the mainstream of Sri Lanka's creative
Landscape.
He has scaled this height, primarily through relentless, creative
excursions.
His successful march towards the higher reaches of his chosen
vocation, echoes a classical pattern familiar to many men and women who
embark upon a search for fulfilment. His beginnings are rural, rustic in
the best sense.
His home town Ambalangoda has always enjoyed a reputation as a
perennial venue of folkarts. These are variegated and widely admired.
Masks, puppetry, pandal art and temple murals figure among the
manifestations of folk creativity.
Niche
He took off from these traditional routes to soar into regions where
he eventually carved out his unmistakably personal niche.
 As maturity guided his creative and artistic path, he settled for a
form of figurative expression that articulated his idealised version of
beauty of the human form.
His advanced limnings have enticingly bathed the female shape in an
alluring aesthetic aura.
The profusion of female forms that have sprung into life through the
magic of his transforming brush and palette forms a tantalising gallery
of new apsaras.
The female figure is a coveted portrayal of most artists.
But in his latest display of achievements he has elevated the
aesthetic appeal of the human form by giving it a historical background.
His figures are not just any anonymous, nameless people. They have a
chronicled presence and personality.
He titles his exhibition by an attractive expression ‘Chronicles of
Love'.
He has explored Sri Lanka's glorious history, spanning over 25 long
centuries to discover outstanding episodes of love and heart-warming
romances. In the human history we can triumphantly record the story of a
royal prince who discarded the throne for his love of a beauty he had
been humanly drawn to. This is the widely known Saliya-Asokamala
romance.
The strategen enables artist Jayasiri Semage to paint not a general
romance, but specific historical love-epics.
Jayasiri Semage's female figures, represent a remarkable creative and
conceptual discipline.
In almost all his romantic portrayals artist Jayasiri Semage does not
yield to the temptation to stress the erotic.
In an impressive anthology of his romantic paintings–presented under
the title Chitralatha, he has presented females in a vast array of
poses. The linear portrayals of the bewitching contours of the female
body at its most attraction, do not move the viewer even towards a trace
of earthy passions.
That, in brief, is his creation victory.
Eroticism
A discriminating viewer may get tempted to place his figures adjacent
to these in George Keyts globally renowned works. Artist Keyts,
unabashedly emphasises a classical eroticism.
But, even in such instances, where the engendering passion is called
for, as a legitimate and logical process, artist Jayasiri Semage,
restrains himself with a discipline that enables a subdued portrayal.
All this points to a larger hesitation. These artists who form a
minor galaxy in Sri Lanka's art world, do not receive due critical
response, as we have run out of that breed of versatile commentators of
creative art.
It is time, that concerted institutes get in motion, a profound
movement to assess properly such outstanding personalities in Sri Lankan
art, as H.A. Karunaratne, Jayasiri Semage and Gunasiri Colombo, to name
but a handful.
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