The Faculty of the fine art of the SOJO University consists of departments of Western Painting, Japanese Style Painting, Graphic Designs, and Sculpture. I had opportunities to work in figure drawing sessions in the sculpture department with Professor Kayako Kusumato and Professor Katsuno who are the leading professors in the department of sculpture and professional sculptors in Japan. Observing these professional sculptors' studios located in the faculty building has taken me into places where all kinds of research activities on materials, forms, and conceptual strategies are taking place. The studios are full of studies of sculptures and objects in bronze, ceramics and terracotta, and mixed media works. The scales of the works vary from life-size to miniature. I did experimental works of sculpture and ceramics and conceptual works on the idea of the body. Further, my studio practice at the department of Japanese Painting Style has been interrelated to my own studio works. The techniques, processes, and materials used in the Japanese Style Painting are very methodological, yet it still gives freedom for artists for expression. Working with gold-leaf that creates a remarkable spatial depth for painting, and close observation of objects and transformation of all these into the artists' own strategies of composition is something that I find similarities with the western notion of painting. In 2013, I first used gold as a color for my painting. The first painting I did use gold as a color is now in the collection of Paradiseroad in Sri Lanka. So, the experience of the Japanese Painting Style inspired me much on using this kind of material for both the conceptual and perceptual purposes of works. In addition, I delivered two talks on my studio practice and the theme of Trauma for the students of the sculpture department and graphic design. In addition to these academic activities, I visited selected art collections and museums in Japan. Among them, the exhibition of the private collection of the world-renown artists Takashi Murakami held in Kumamoto Contemporary Art Center and the visit to the Fukuoka Asian Arts Museum was an inspiring experience for me.
Fuckoka Museum of Asian Art (FAAM), Fukuoka, Japan.
The Museum is one of the leading contemporary institutions in Japan that houses the visual arts produced in Asia. The Museum’s collection includes several works by Sri Lankan artists spanning from M.Sarlis, Lionel Wendt, George Keyt, Ivan Peries, Stanley Kirinde, H.A. Karunarathne, Jagath Weerasinghe, Chandraguptha Thenuwara to several contemporary artists. Yet it is important to state that this collection does not show the profile of Sri Lanka Art which is broader than the collection represented at the FAAM.
However, having at least a certain number of works by Sri Lankan artists at the museum’s permanent collection is a vital matter for the field of visual arts of Sri Lanka. My visit to the museum confirmed that in-depth academic research and surveys should be carried out by the museum to select the works of art from a country like Sri Lanka. In this regard, I believe that the faculty of visual arts (UVPA) where I am a faculty member also has a huge responsibility to be actively involved in this kind of matter. The roles of the National Gallery in Colombo and their curators, private art collectors, gallery owners, scholars, and artists of Sri Lanka should be aware of this, and inevitably they are responsible to promote the profile of Sri Lankan Art in the global context. On the other hand, this would be a political matter in the field that (when it comes to the context of writing about Sri Lankan Art) how the international museums, galleries, and curators prefer to represent the country (especially countries in the third world) within a global context.
At the time I visited the museum, a lithograph print by M. Sarlis and a painting by Stanley Kirinde were on view. However, I had an opportunity to meet one of the curators of the museum who has first contacted me in 2013 when I was studying in New York. In exploring the collection of Sri Lankan art at the museum the curator showed me data on a painting by Tudor Rajapakse. The painting has been titled "Portrait of Sri Lankan Woman". That made me rethink the painting as it did not convince me as the language of painting by Rajapakse. My writing about the painting is not about the judgment of its authentication, yet the missing of the signature styles of Rajapakse on the painting at FAAM.
A Painting inferior to Green Saree at NAG: Colombo
A painting titled Portrait of a Sri Lankan Woman by the artist in the early modern period of Sri Lanka Tudor Rajapakse is not seen as an identical style of painting by him. The technical masterfulness of his painting such as Green Saree which is at the permanent collection of the National Art Gallery Colombo (NAG) is not present in the work of the FAAM. The work at the FAAM seems a poor representation of the same pose with an alteration of the dress of the painting at NAG Colombo.
The work at the FAAM is defined as an example of representing the academic style of the Ceylon Society of Art (Wendt 2003, 15). My observation is that it is problematic to represent this works as an example of an academic painting style of Sri Lankan Painting. And, the painting shows an attempt by the artist (I referred to the Data recorded at the FAMM) to get the same face of the woman in the Green Saree. The painting at the NAG - Colombo shows the artist's capacity in masterfully handling material. Rajapakse's style of painting at the NAG- Colombo seems similar to the style of painting by American portrait painter John Singer Sargent (1856 - 1925), which features loss and thin application of paint with an abstraction of the movements of brush works. This kind of technical narrative is linked with both Frans Halls and Impressionists as well. However, the flesh tones of the painting at FAAM are completely dead in terms of the flesh tones of the NAG in Colombo which shows subtle modulation of tones and temperatures.
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