He translates beauty into hope

Nihal Sangabo Dias:

Good painters are rare beings. The genuine academic painter, the painter who is able to express himself fully with a great tradition and with complete understanding of its possibilities and limitations is a fortunate one. Such a painter is Nihal Sangabo Dias.

Nihal hails from Galle, the romantic old-world town with a picturesque seaside resort which lies on the Southern Coast, of Sri Lanka. The splendour of this ancient town and its rich earth, warm sunlight and its Buddhist aura became a powerful and a lasting influence to provide an artistic stimulus to Nihal's life.

Nihal showed his talents with the brush at an early age, and expressed a desire to become an artist. His parents gave him every support to pursue his studies as well as art. His father was a school principal. He was attracted by his son's drawings on the floor done with chalk.

Viharamaha Devi

Nihal Sangabo Dias

The observant father provided him with drawing sheets and colours and helped him tremendously to promote his artistic potentials. Unfortunately, he is handicapped in hearing from birth, and cannot even talk. But he does not have even a momentary sick feeling about his handicap. It has given him more courage and strength to reach greater heights in his profession through grim dertermination.

Since he had a apptitude for art from his early childhood, he was able to show his talents and impress his teachers as a schoolboy artist. At every examination he scored distinction in art.

He was admitted to the Mahawewa School for the Deaf and the Blind. The lady teacher at the school patiently helped him to improve his artistic talents. He also had his early education at Rohana School for the Deaf and Blind at Matara, where he worked in the same school in later years as an art instructor from 1976-1978.

While there was no formal education institution for deaf children in Matara, he joined a class conducted by a teacher at a village temple. During this time having displayed his work at an exhibition he was awarded a scholarlship by the (then) Minister of Social Services to join the Government School of Fine Arts, known as Lalitha Kalayathanaya to study art and sculpture. It was also known as Heywood School of Art, where he graduated and also obtained a Diploma in Sculpture in 1972.

Village at dawn

In 1982 he joined the Colombo Municipal Council as an artist in its printing department.

In 1986 he became an instructor at the Sri Lanka Sign Language Research Committee and the Chief Artist at the National Education Institute. He also represented Sri Lanka at the educational workshop for the handicapped held in Sweden in 1987. He has held several solo exhibitions in Colombo and International exhibitiosn include Asia Pacific exhibition of Buddhist paintings in Germany Hanboldt Libra, Reinickendrof, Berlin and in Delhi.

In recognition of his work he has won two international awards. International Quality ERA Award, Gold Geneva 2004 and Worldwide Quality XXI century.

His work has a wide variety of designs, landscapes, wildlife, and birds. He has designed several postage stamps in Sri Lanka. Nihal has carried out various assignments in producing work for public and private nstitutions including murals in the Dematagoda Anandaramaya and Batapotha 'Sudarma Vihara'.

Nihal translates sorrow into beauty, and transmutes beauty into hope. And to papaphrase an old aphorism, 'While there's hope, there life.'