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| Sunday, 29 June 2003 |
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The bark of the trees is pink. The distant building covered in purple. The rest of the picture is a swirl of playful colours. In the other painting set in the seaside a mysterious lonely woman is meditating on a rock under the clear blue sky while the waves dance about at the bottom. The third picture (not seen here) is of a lush green paddy field cut here and there by reddish brown roads, of which behind lies a murky green forest, a little yellow hut, more paddy and a splash of dark indigo sky. The number of paintings standing and being pulled out before me are numerous. From waterfalls, rocks, birds, flowers, gardens, people, animals, temples and buildings to undecipherable abstract stuff. They all however speak one language. The expressions of a child. Child Art. Yes. These are the works of the children learning in the Shyamala School of Art, which celebrated its one year anniversary on May 30th 2003. Located in the rural-urban landscape of Thalawathugoda, the first sight of the studio/school struck me as Wow! Situated in what seemed like the middle of a jungle in the city, the insides of this white, brown edged building with a roof top, was no less splendid than its outer face, with white tiled floors and three groups of reddish-brown tables and chairs dabbed here and there with splashes of paint. The remnants of children's works. A three quarters filled book shelf stands in the corner. The designer, owner and teacher of the place, Shyamala Pinto-Jayawardena speaks passionately of her profession and hobby. "I love teaching kids. A child needs to be expressive and art brings this out. It is as much therapeutic to me as it is for them". Shyamala's style of teaching is giving a child his/her freedom while guiding him/her in the finer points. Just as much as Shyamala feels children should not be claustrophised she believes they should not be just left to do everything on their own, but be given guidance when necessary. "We should not enforce our style onto the child, but let them discover their own one, and nurture them in the process. It is important to teach children to think" is her motto. While at times Shyamala lets them draw their own pictures, at other times she gives them a topic. A topic I found interesting after seeing the pictures and hearing her explain it to me was on "Rocks and Water". The young artists could draw whatever they wanted in any medium they desired, provided the picture had some form of rocks and water in it. While the picture of the woman on the rock is a result of one, another is of a foamy blue and white waterfall cascading down rocks painted in different patterns such as white with little black dots, shades of brown and yellow, lines drawn in various designs-the works of a bronze inked pen. The effect on the whole is bewitching. A mixture of the real with the unreal. "This" says Shyamala "is haptic art, in which the artist sees natural objectives in a patternful design oriented simplified formula which normal people don't see". A further remarkable fact was that the same eight year old boy who had created that picture was also the artist of the contrasting visually artistic picture of the simple scenic paddy field. However not everyone can be haptic and visual at the same time says Shyamala. Teaching is in Shyamala's blood, beginning her career in it at the age of seventeen at the Cora Abrahams Art School. Graduating in Fine Arts from the University of Kelaniya, she has been professionally teaching for twenty years. Her own art school which just celebrated its first birthday, is a dream Shyamala has always had since the age of eight. |
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