Line art exhibition at Lionel Wendt

By Husna Inayathullah

Gamini Abeykoon, art director at an advertising agency will hold his first solo exhibition from February 28 to March 2, at the Lionel Wendt Art Gallery, Colombo 7.

The opening ceremony will be held on February 27 at 6 p.m. Abeykoon does line art using black pen and ink on Kent paper. He says there is poetry in every line and one can read the lines and in between the lines. "There is rhyme in every stroke and reason in every drawing," he said.

Line art or line drawing is any image that consists of distinct straight or curved lines placed against a background without gradations in shade or colour to represent two-dimensional or three-dimensional objects.

Line art can use lines of different colours, although it is usually monochromatic. It emphasises form and outline, colour, shading and texture. However, areas of solid pigment and dots can also be used in addition to lines. The lines in a piece of line art may be all of a constant width of several constant widths or of freely varying widths. Line art may tend towards realism or it may be a caricature, cartoon, ideograph or glyph.

Born and bred in Ratnapura, Abeykoon has a keen interest in reading books on the history and culture of Sri Lanka. He says it inspired him to draw. "I attended Seevali Central College in Ratnapura where I did art as a subject only upto grade eight.

My parents did not like me going in the art field. They wanted me to do science saying that it is more recognised rather than doing arts but I was not interested. I had the natural talent and interest in arts."He said one of his friend inspired him for the first time by sending him a Sri Lankan history book from London.

"This book inspired me. In my line art I have drawn a lot from the history from Sri Lanka. I draw nature, wildlife, human figures, portrait and ancient historical background scenery. I have done almost 20 stamp drawings too," he said.

Before the development of photography and of halftones, line art was the standard format for illustrations to be used in print publications, using black ink on white paper-one of the most fundamental elements of art is the line.

An important feature of a line is that it indicates the edge of a two-dimensional (flat) shape or a three-dimensional form. A shape can be indicated by means of an outline and a three-dimensional form can be indicated by contour lines.

He said, "I joined the Siththara cartoon paper as an artist soon after my Advanced Level examination. I studied and got training under Stantley Abeysinghe, Principal of Heywood College. In 1987 I worked as a textile designer in Katubedda. I worked as a visualiser at two advertising agencies in 1995. Thereafter, I joined another advertising agency as an art director in 1997 and I work there at present."

Abeykoon will display 40 line drawings at his solo exhibition. The exhibition is open to the public. He said, "In Sri Lanka the support given to the artists by the government is very poor compared to other countries.

I think the government should give its support to artists to go further and development skills. The George Keyt Foundation is the only organisation which supports artists in Sri Lanka."