Semage’s creative odyssey

by Kalakeerthi Dr. Edwin Ariyadasa

“In life beauty perishes, but not in art”
Italian Renaissance Genius Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)

An individual given totally to creativity is a perpetual seeker. The urge to discover new frontiers is a built-in facet of his personality. A questing spirit propels him on. He simply cannot stand still – creativity speaking that is. He must allow his soul to soar, giving it free rein.

Distinguished creative artist Jayasiri Semage, who has scaled many a height in his long and sustained pilgrimage, endures yet another significant stage in his adventurous odyssey. As a young and emerging creative soul, he was moved to insatiable curiosity by the compelling pageant of the ever-unfolding natural environment. The sights and sounds, the movements and textures of what the Generous Mother Earth presented to him lavishly, formed his early inspiration.

As he grew up in his childhood village, the rural monastery beckoned him to an aesthetic world and its variegated display of mural paintings left an indelible impression in the inner recesses of his incipient being. With maturity, the yearning infant from the remote home earned a globe girdling reputation, for his unique artistic vision.

Compulsion

The motifs and brush strokes, in the early era of beginnings, evolved with the ever-burgeoning experiences, into masterpieces that made Kalasuri Jayasiri Semage a force to be reckoned with in the landscape of artistic creativity.

An unceasing compulsion to climb still higher made the heroic artist to venture into fresh regions and virgin territories of creativity.

Eventually, the world became his salon and discriminate sectors for the four corners of the earth his avid fans. Meanwhile, Kalasuri Semage kept on progressing, synthesizing the familiar ingredients and elements into entirely surprising new visions.

His repertoire of linear rhythms, arabesques and curves has now emerged in a new incarnation.

His evolution as an established presence in the current stream of Sri Lanka’s exquisite artistic tradition is further enhanced by the sensual female forms that adorn his latest series of paintings.

Artistic adventurer Semage has moved on to an exacting exploration of a new creative domain specifically to my mind to offer an intimate tribute to the eternal allure of the sensuous female form.

In his aesthetic philosophy, his articulated view is that a profoundly creative artist, experiences an inner urge to exalt serenely perceived nudity. Semage hastens to add that in such a creative homage to nudity, there is not even a fleeting trace of an attempt to stir basic appetites.

Kalasuri Semage pays an unabashed and an uninhibited tribute to the universal maestro Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) for his aesthetic preoccupation with nudity in the climactic phase of his classic career.

The linear rhythms of Semage’s present and latest array of paintings are in a way a curtain raiser for his next step. And I am quite certain that at that stage aesthetically formulated works depicting nudity with disciplined creative restraint will form the central focus of his array of paintings.

Displays

In his future displays, Semage will showcase his theme with due deference to our unique cultural identity and indigenous value systems.

Semage will also provide his keen island-wide admirers an opportunity to gain a glimpse of his latest efforts that depicts a tastefully balanced synthesis of rhythm, lyricism and linear innovations.

Over the years, in his own subdued and restrained manner, Kalasuri Semage ushered in several quiet revolutions.

Above all, it is artist-philosophy Kalasuri Semage who has elevated the feminine form into its due aesthetic status. In the arduous exploration of new creative domains, he will continue to pursue that ideal, come what may.