ARTS

• They leap out in striking blues and saffron hues
• Of Russian ballet and gourmet
• Oh those chunky figures
• Strains of sitar for concerto with eastern flavour

They leap out in striking blues and saffron hues

By Yamini Sequeira

"I want to paint that ONE great painting in my lifetime," muses artist Sue Carney. You wonder what she's talking about as you scan the eye-catching paintings strewn around the room. And your thoughts echo her college art instructor who once commented on the same thought, "Well, maybe you've done that already!"

And truly the sheer electricity generated by Sue Carney's paintings seizes you by the jugular as the celebration of the exhibition titled '17 Days In August' comes alive in an instant. Presented by the British Council, British artist Sue Carney's paintings are on view from Tuesday to Friday at the British Council hall.

Little did Sue Carney know that her 17-day holiday in Sri Lanka in the August of '97 would move her enough to paint over 80 paintings and even exhibit them here! "When I went back to the UK last year I painted purely out of recollection of the sights and sounds of Sri Lanka." And the memories came thick and fast in the striking blues of the angry ocean the saffron of monks' robes and saturated verdant greens of the lush countryside coupled with multicoloured worlds that celebrate Sri Lanka through Sue Carney's eyes.

The mastery over the acrylic medium that is Carney's faithful tool, is evident at first glance. Although an abstract expressionist painter Sue Carney's works are very ' accessible' to the lay viewer so she can safely stash away her fears about "abstract work being too elitist. By its very nature abstract painting is elitist but not Sue Carney's renderings. Her paintings leap out at the viewer offering a myriad possibilities. The brushstrokes are very disciplined, obviously a throwback to her current preoccupation as teacher at the Kent Institute of Art and Design, UK. Sue Carney's artistic journey has taken her from sculpture to constructed lithographs, installations and led finally in 1990 to her settling down comfortably into the wondrous world of abstract paintings.

Now 40-plus, vibrant Sue Carney has led a very unconventional life and that has possibly inspired the spontaneity and freshness that is visible in her work. Starting out as an academically bright student she cocked a snook at convention by persevering in non-traditional art courses which were largely male-dominated, doing installations that were looked at askance because of their very feminine vision, (a 12 foot high column sheathed in velvet) but faultless for their technique, a first baby at 20, and a late entry into teaching. And now next to her love for painting is her dedication to her students. "You get so much back from them if you're willing to give them a lot," she reflects.

Of Russian ballet and gourmet

By Chamintha Thilakaratna

The National Russian Ballet team comprising 11 soloists is in town for a week beginning March 19, to give audiences a tasteof Russian classical ballet.

Winners of several international and national competitions, the team will perform many popular ballet acts. They include the famous Swan Lake, Chopinianae ,The Walpurgisí, Paquita, The Prince of this World followed by a gala concert, where a view of the history of Russian ballet can be seen.

They will perform at the Royal Oceanic Beach Hotel on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Tickets are priced at Rs.1000 nett for Tuesday and Rs.250 per head for Wednesday which is only a public show. They will also perform at Blue Water hotel on Thursday.The performance and dinner will be at Rs.1000 nett per person and the performance only on that day will be at Rs.300 nett per person. Their final performance will be at the Light House hotel on March 28 at 7 p.m. The performance will cost Rs.300 nett per person while performance and dinner is priced at Rs.1000 nett per person.

The group also includes a chef, two artists, and a harpist. The Russian Chef, Plesskiy Stanislav will be titillating your taste buds at the Noblesse and Summer Fields restaurants today from 7-11p.m.

This promises to be a delicious and authentic experience. Rs.850 nett per person. An exhibition of paintings by Victor Orlov is on at the hotel till today. Mr Orlov will also give a live demonstrtation of figure drawing techniques.

There will be a rare performance by Russian harpist, Albekova Elena at the Trans Asia Lobby for five days from the 19th from 6- 7.30 p.m.

Oh those chunky figures

Alex Stewart has once again put a foot in the door as he has been wont to do in the past. His sometimes amusing and sometimes startling paintings of life in Sri Lanka as viewed through his eyes most definitely cannot be ignored.

Commencing March 27 until April 9, British artist Alex Stewart's exhibition of paintings at Colombo's Gallery 706 is definitely worth a dekko.

Reflecting strong influences of East European naive art and Mexican painters, Alex Stewart's paintings reveal a sharp eye for detail. His frequent visits to Sri Lanka have apparently been spent in clear-eyed observation of everyday life in the city streets. A scene from a grocery store, a crowded bus with commuters hanging out, hesitant lovers holding hands tentatively sitting at opposite ends of a park bench, a wannabe model posing coquettishly amongst scattered thambili shells- Alex Stewart paints it all with faultless precision and understated humour.The painter uses saturated colours like green, purple and orange in most of his frames and succeeds in a brilliant effect that belies the use of water colours as in the pale English water colours tradition. The style being entirely figurative the characters are drawn chunky in nature and that seems to be his concession to abstraction. "Sometimes people occupy more 'space' than their actual physical size," says Alex.

"I find Sri Lanka a very feminine country", he says and that is apparent in his paintings largely dominated by women There is a reccuring image of an "angel" in a blue sari who appears clam and serene amidst the hurly burly of the city. The angel motif has been present ever since Alex Stewart made critics sit up and take note of him by painting in an unusual style at once rustic and yet modern."Since I am a self-taught painter, I had no rules to follow or break, so I created my own", says the painter.

Having travelled through a painful and near-death experience earlier in life, Alex Stewart switched careers from catering to painting and found it to be a healing transition, both physically and spiritually. His search for a sustaining spiritual idiom is enshrined in the depiction of the angel in a blue sari. For now Alex Stewert appears to have chased away the twin demons of confusion and anarchy with his therapeutic brushstrokes that reveal none of that cynicism and at times even success in achieving a spiritual quality.

– Y.S.

Strains of sitar for concerto with eastern flavour

By Madubhashini Ratnayake

The Symphony Orchestra of Sri Lanka celebrates the 50th Anniversary of Sri Lanka and its own 40 years of existence by staging a special concert at the Bishops College Auditorium on Saturday at 7 pm, under the baton of Lalanath de Silva.

Apart from the exciting line up of music scheduled for the evening, it will have the first ever concerto composed in this country for an Eastern instrument when Lalanath de Silva's Sitar Concerto premiers on this day. Apart from Sitar Maestro Ravi Shankar's work with the London Symphony Orchetsra a few decades ago, there is no other well known example of a Sitar Concerto found in this part of the world.

"This is one of four compositions given to four composers who were commissioned for the 50th Independence Anniversary of the country by the Deva Surya Sena Trust. This would be the first one that would be performed in that series," explains Lalanath de Silva.

About why he chose the Sitar to be the solo instrument, he says, "Most of the concerti throughout the history of music have been written for or inspired by virtuoso performers. The concerti are premiered by these particular performers as well. It is the same in this case."

The soloist of the Sitar concerto is Pradeep Ratnayake whom Sri Lankan audiences have got to know through his classical and fusion music series "Pradeepanjali", the latest of which was staged last week. "He is an unusual player in that he seeks to expand the frontiers of the Sitar - from his use of harmony to his exploration of other musical traditions," says de Silva. "His inclination towards new creativity almost defines what I feel is a new musical tradition for us."

Lalanath has used two ragas as his base for this concerto - Rag Malkoush and Koushikdhwani. .He has also used the various complex rhythms found in the Indian music system in his orchestration. Playing the tabla, in particular sections, would be Ravibandhu Vidyapati, who recently played alongside the world class musician Ustad Zakir Hussein when he performed in Sri Lanka, and Krishna, well known for his creativity on the ghatam.

"The Concerto is in three movements, the first in Sonata Form, the third in Rondo. The second is slow and in a freer style, which allows the soloist to improvise in parts. There is an lib cadenza in it too," explains Lalanath. "While harmonizing the work, I have tried to keep to the notes available in a raga. It is very interesting for me as a Western musician, since this closes some possibilities while opening up others."

Trained as a Western musician, Lalanath's exposure to eastern music has been through his professional association with musicians like Harsha Makalanda, Pradeep Ratnayake and Ravibandhu Vidyapati. Therefore, interesting experimentation can be found in this concerto, like modulation, that is, the shifting of the base note from one to the other - a concept alien to Indian music, which always has a fixed base. It is Lalanath's use of modulation in this concerto that makes the sitarist shift the frets about while playing, an action hardly ever done during performance, since the sitar frets are made for fixed modulation.

The other soloist for the evening, playing Dimitri Kabalewski's Cello Concerto No 1 is Dushyanthi Perera. "She is one of the most accomplished Cello players in the country. And she has brought to Sri Lankan audiences, the greatest number of Cello concerti by different composers," says the conductor and adds that she is completely committed to her instrument.

Kabalewski is a modern Russian composer who died in 1981. "He was a composer heavily influenced by Russian folk music, and this concerto has a lot of folk melodies coming in," says Lalanath. "This is not a long piece, perhaps being just about 15 minutes long, but it is almost perfect in form; very melodious and very listenable."

The evening will also feature a symphonic poem by Franz Lizst -"Les Preludes." A symphonic work is a piece of music that always describes some story or poem, explains the conductor. Les Preludes is based on a poem by the French poet Lamartine. The music describes, in its own language, what the words say, and would be very interesting for Sri Lankan audiences, as the famous symphonic poems of Liszt has not been performed here before.

The finale for the evening is Borodin's The Polovtsian Dances taken from his opera, Prince Igor. The symphony will be joined by a combined choir which will include Brigette Halpe's Peradeniya Singers. This very rousing piece contains the theme that was taken, during the time of the Second World War to make the song called Stranger in Paradise, says the conductor.

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