Nirmala de Alwis - Honouring  her father’s legacy

"We don’t give the elephant its rightful place. When my Dad was the Director at that time he opened up sanctuaries for animals and elephant corridors linking one particular area with another area.”

Nirmala De Alwis specialises in wildlife paintings. She is inspired by the beauty and majesty of elephants. Her father was the late Deshabandu Lyn de Alwis, Director of the Department of Wildlife and the National Zoological Gardens in Sri Lanka. Nirmala had many pets because when animals in the zoo had babies that were rejected she had to be their foster mother. Her father brought the cubs home and Nirmala had to prepare the formula milk to feed it. And after the cubs grew up she had to give it back to the zoo. Nirmala had lion cubs, leopard cubs, otters and deer. She remembers that the first thing she did after coming home from school was to go straight to the zoo as her house was inside the zoo.

Nirmala’s father influenced her to paint animals and he took her on circuits to the national parks. Whenever she had school holidays, she would be in Yala, Wilpattu or one of the parks. That is where she started sketching animals because in the wild it was much easier, more free and more inspiring to sketch.

For Nirmala art is a form of expression and she likes to bring out the personality of the animals. She is concerned that elephants are being killed quite a lot in Sri Lanka and the painful death the elephants suffer is very sad. She says, “We don’t give the elephant its rightful place.

When my Dad was the Director at that time he opened up sanctuaries for animals and elephant corridors linking one particular area with another area.” She explains that the human elephant conflict has arisen because the migratory routes the elephants have instinctively been programmed to use have been taken away and they are forced to take migratory routes suggested by people who want land.

The Lyn de Alwis Memorial Trust tries to resolve this problem by providing spaces for elephants. Nirmala is also against the movement to close the Dehiwala zoo because it has a rich history and it is connected so much with nature and animals. She says, “school kids love to go to the zoo and see animals, and my daughter’s day trip in Grade 1 was to the zoo.” She further says that when they are recruiting people they should take people who love animals and new training methods have to be introduced.

In her art Nirmala tries to bring out the empathy and bond she has with elephants. She had a gallery at home with lots of sketches of elephants and those were the pictures that people would buy. Even foreigners would purchase elephant sketches and paintings. Her favourite medium is charcoal on raw canvas. Nirmala did ballet when she was young and she loves travelling. Her Dad went to different countries for conferences and she has visited many museums and art galleries. Her favourite is the Tate Art Museum in London and her dream is to go to Paris. She says there is no support from the government for artists in Sri Lanka apart from the George Keyt Foundation.