The Lost Collection

Laki Senanayake |
The priceless collection of 73 drawings and paintings were done
between 1971 and 1978. Completely forgotten by Laki Senanayake, they
vanished into a black hole of his memory, and amazingly resurfaced in
2015, thanks to the internet.
In 1974 Laki was visited by Lady Olga Cannon, the wife of a British
Labour Peer. While visiting the island she had asked to meet local
artists and was introduced to Laki who at the time was living in a
commune farm in Dambulla. Lady Olga stayed several weeks at the commune
watching Laki dig the fields every day, and returning to draw and paint
in the night.
Recognising the genius of Laki's art work, she very kindly offered
him Rs. 6,000 and advised him to spend his entire time painting. Laki
not wishing to accept such a large sum for gratis gave her 6 large
drawings of trees as a gift. She also commissioned him to do
illustrations for a translation of the Indian Panchatantra folk tales
she was writing for children, for the handsome sum of 400 pounds.
She also suggested that his drawings should be published as a
collection of botanical and landscape drawings, and knowing the well
known novelist, Grahame Greene, who was a director of a prestigious
publishing house at the time, was confident of getting them published.
She took the drawings back with her and showed them to the publishers
who liked the drawings very much, but said it needed a text.

Laki Senanayake. ‘THE MONKEY SAGE’ |

‘Tree and Creeper’ |
Laki, being an idealist, refused to do this. He wanted to have a book
to look at rather than to read. Lady Olga tried several other publishers
with no favourable result.
As time went by they lost touch. Laki later learned she had moved to
Granada and with the passage of time Laki completely forgot that the
drawings existed.
As luck would have it, she had bequeathed the entire collection to
her daughter-in-law, Diane Cannon, who happened to see the name 'Laki'
mentioned on the website of a friend of Laki's who contacted her and
eventually tracked Laki down. Laki bought the collection.
Laki, born in 1937, has been painting and drawing since the age of
three.
Laki is an imaginative artist of genius in many fields and one of the
focal figures of Sri Lankan creative art. He belongs to the generation
that emerged in the 1950s, a period as innovative and creative in Sri
Lankan art, literature, music, theatre and film as any that has followed
since.
Almost from boyhood he worked closely with the great artists of the
time, the Australian artist Donald Friend, architects Geoffrey Bawa and
Ulrik Plesner, Valentine Gunasekara, landscape designer Bevis Bawa,
fabric designers Ena de Silva and Barbara Sansoni, and thinkers and
writers such as Reggie Siriwardena and Senator R Nadesan.
His art ranges from abstract to natural, from Surrealist to Cubist,
in media that range from silkscreen printing, metal sculpture, and
papier mache. Laki's output represents the richness of Sri Lankan life
and experience in a matching diversity and richness of expression.

Kumbuk Tree. |

Peradeniya |
His spontaneous approach to drawing, subjects and techniques have
outraged convention many times, and repeatedly served as a liberating
influence on the younger generations.
His work includes painting, drawing, sculpture, architecture,
agriculture, landscape gardening, silk screen printing, batik, dyeing,
book illustration, currency design, poetry and inventions of various
sorts and digital art. He created many sculptures and murals for
Geoffrey Bawa's buildings.
He lives in Diyabubula, a water garden in Dambulla, along with a
large variety of wildlife including monkeys, many species of birds,
otters, monitor lizards, mouse deer, snakes and a crocodile. |