Shamen Walker:

Lines of reality

by Ryhana Salle

Shamen Walker always had the talent to draw, so she decided to learn art as a subject in school.

When growing up, she drew to overcome her loneliness. Gradually it became a hobby, but she just drew to please herself and indulged in it whenever she had some time for herself.

However, she started doing hyper realistic drawings in 2013, and justifies the new passion by pointing out that art is found in all living things including humans, animals and nature. “We all portrait ourselves within the art of living,” she says, adding “Art is not a part of my life, it is my whole life.”

Though Shamen had been drawing since she was a little girl, she wasn’t really serious about it until the age of 10, when she started to get a lot of compliments on her art from family and friends. Acknowledges the artist, “Of course when you are told you are good at something, it makes you feel special, and so you keep doing it to excel.”

Shamen says the main reason she opted to get into realistic portraits was Facebook. “I got to know a lot of very talented foreign artists through Facebook, I saw their work, and wanted to try it myself,” she says, admitting that she is truly appreciative of their influence and support.

Later when she actually settled in to do realistic portraits, Shamen received a lot of comments and support through Facebook and now has a huge FB support group that encourages her as an artist.

It is obvious that Shamen prefers to do portraits. However, she also enjoys doing wildlife and horse. She explains, “I love nature, and nature is art. As I mentioned before life is united with art, so I enjoy doing wildlife more than landscapes and figures.”

She prefers pencil drawings and says that Sri Lanka didn’t have a good market for pencil drawing until very recently. However, she saw a lot of foreign hyper realistic work that provoked the interest for her to get into that media.

Shamen finds it easy to use the pencil to express her feelings on paper and firmly believes the secret behind her magic is the use of lead. Says she, “Lead when mixed with my imagination, can do wonders.”

Using graphite pencils and very minimal amounts of charcoal, she methodically lays down stroke after stroke to create facial features, expressions, texture of the skin, bone structure, shadow and lights.

Shamen’s powerfully evocative portrait ‘Katu saha mal’ is a hyper realistic drawing, which has the ability to speak to the viewer.

This drawing was mainly influenced by a picture taken by a very talented photographer, Channa Dananjaya, and depicts a struggling girl who is attempting to piece her life back together after the turmoil of the civil war in Sri Lanka.

Shamen explains, “Children experiencing segregation in society stimulated me in creating ‘Katu Saha Mal’. We should not let race, gender, religion or any other factor interrupt the blossoming of our children, and more importantly the future of humanity.”

Born in Bandaragama. Shamen went to Kottawa Dharmapala Vidyalaya and St. Anthony’s Girls’ School in Panadura. After her ALs she decided to follow a Business Management Degree in Cyprus. She also did course at the Vibhava academy of fine arts.