Spare lines and space

‘Lineal Lyrics’, Alawwa-based artist Chandana Ranaweera’s exhibition of drawings will be held at the Alliance Francaise de Kandy from July 21 to 27 from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. each day. Here Professor Ashley Halpé reflects on his work.

“When I first encountered the art of Chandana Ranaweera some years ago I found he was an adventurous explorer of possibilities. He had begun his career as a poet of the line, drawing with great skill and assurance and, at the same time imaginative audacity. He had then developed a greater command of technical resources and was using them to create a family of distinctive images. He had developed a distinctive vocabulary and was exploring the medium itself in addition to his voyages of the imagination.

“He has now returned in the current exhibition to the line, using it with new sophistication and frequent unexpectedness. We often have the whimsical mouths and noses and staring eyes of the early period, now devoted mainly to observations of the world he saw around him, though there are also some refreshing flights of imagination. In all the drawings a superb use of space gives the maximum value to the spare lines and taut figures.”