Solo exhibition to be unveiled

By Dilshan Boange

An artist creates and conveys moods, emotions, sentiments and messages, through his works. And artists have different media to achieve their expression.

Artist Gamini Abeykoon is one who has chosen his medium to create pictures and images, which may be seen as a means for a monochromic mould. That is the impression that I get when I see the works of Abeykoon who has worked as a visualiser at two advertising agencies.

He has also worked as an art director at another advertising agency.His practice as a sketcher spans back to his boyhood, back to his in Weralupa, Ratnapura.

The beginnings of his lifelong passion and personal engagement with drawing and painting as a medium of expression can be chartered to the initial tutelage he got from Pemmananda who was Abeykoon's first art instructor at Seevali Primary School.

Over the course of time as he worked full time as a teacher and later a textile designer before joining the advertising industry Abeykoon ensured that his passion for the creation of imagery was not sidelined to oblivion, as it tends to happen to some talented artists who do not avidly pursue means to keep up their artistic practice.

Avocation

Cartooning had been the avenue along which Abeykoon had found both an avocation that allows part time engagement and also remuneration while being given the opportunity to develop and keep up his hand at sketching.

The well-known artist Camillus Perera had been pivotal in this regard as a person who provided opportunities for Abeykoon to work as a cartoonist-cum-illustrator.

He had been an illustrator to Camillu's paper Sathsiri since 1985 and had continued to work for the that paper until 2000. Abeykoon will now present his first solo exhibition. The title is Line Poetry. The significance behind the title is that his works are his poems; they are from the heart and speak of his inner being.

The medium is line drawing using the instrument regarded mightier than the sword -the pen. Thus the tool that gives textual form to the song of the poet brings to life the 'wordless verses' of emotions within Abeykoon.

Style

A collection of 40 works drawn by pen establishing what the artist asserts as his signature style will be open to art lovers at the Lionel Wendt Art Gallery from February 27 (opening at 6 p.m.) and be on display till March 2.I had a glimpse of a number of the pieces that are set to be unveiled at Line Poetry -the first solo exhibition by Abeykoon.

They range from landscapes of captivating rural Sri Lanka to notable monuments and portraits of people whose pose, mood and depth of inner being presented as still life will create many an impression to the eye and imagination of art lovers.

The style and range of the pieces by Abeykoon will gently call out to art lovers in a visually poetic mosaic bespeaking of a profound vision within the heart of the artist. Line Poetry will present an appreciable experience to all art lovers.