'There's no inspiration, only an urge'

Laki Senanayake's latest exhibition has a tortured saint as its theme. Here the artist talks to Renuka Sadanandan

Laki Senanayake is in two minds about at- tending the opening of his forthcoming exhibition at the Gallery 706. "Maybe, I'll come in disguise, I'm a master at disguise," he muses. Never mind that it is his first exhibition in seven years, and there will be quite some public interest in both the work and the artist. Says he, "Do you know what Picasso said when he was asked why he was not going to his exhibition. He said, 'what's the use, I've seen these things already.' Exactly how I feel."

The touch of reticence is typical of the man whose drawings, sculptures and batiks, are so familiar, seen in so many of Sri Lanka's public buildings, yet whose face itself is so little known. In an era of self-aggrandizement, he sees little reason to advertise himself....rather let his work do the talking.

Laid-back and friendly, equally attentive whether making a paper plane for a toddler wandering by or giving an interview, Laki Senanayake is not one to stand on ceremony. He is also a prolific artist. This particular exhibition, to be held at the Gallery 706 (Barefoot) from September 17 to October 3, takes as its theme St. Sebastian. His series of some 17 finely executed black and white drawings are arresting in their stark simplicity, capturing the tortured saint with rare grace.

So why the preoccupation with St. Sebastian? Some mystic connection? Nothing so hallowed, he laughs.

" St. Sebastian is merely incidental. The reason for drawing this is because I like to draw. I always need an excuse to draw. I actually don't know much about St. Sebastian. I know he was a soldier, but as for inspiration, things don't inspire me to draw. I have the urge to draw and I'll draw anything that is there," he says bluntly. "It's like the urge to eat or to read, if there's nothing else around I'll read the telephone directory."

He also likes drawing bodies. "I wanted to draw a body in action and poor St. Sebastian was really my excuse." Sebastian, incidentally was a captain of the Praetorian guard in the court of Roman Emperor Diocletian and was sentenced to be shot to death on account of his Christian faith. Hence he is popularly depicted being pierced by arrows.

Laki goes on to explain that when he lived for a time on the fringes of Muthurajawela, there was a shrine to St. Sebastian close by. This statue, however, arrows notwithstanding, depicted him with a fairly ecstatic expression on his face. "My drawings have more of the quality of pain that one would feel if you had been shot, nothing ecstatic about them."

There was also a desire to capture the religiosity of the coastal, Catholic belt, the aura that is so strong in the area. "Plus, there is some architectural element that I was interested in, the shapes that they use in all their decorations which may not seem aesthetic to us, but fit into that setting."

He is also exploring here different techniques of drawing. "These are both water colours and hand drawings. Sometimes I paint with a brush with just water, the shape, and draw on top of it so that the line bleeds so that you get a quality that you can't really get with a brush." These are done with a porcupine quill, one of the best drawing instruments, he says, because you can vary the line, make it very thin. "It gives you great versatility. With the usual pens, the line is dead."

So we are seeing somewhat of a departure from his consuming passion for the environment and the wild, themes that have been his since his childhood, growing up on a coconut estate, surrounded by forest. He attributes some of his abiding interests, rocks, forests, water, to this early exposure.

"Maybe my next exhibition can be on rocks and water. I certainly have enough of those paintings," he says. "It is funny that now I am involved in landscaping which brings me back to rocks and water, though these aren't always natural." Talking of landscaping, his firm is doing a botanical garden for the Theosophical Society in Adayar, Madras, a place of rare tranquility and many massive trees, grown over generations. "They wanted a wilderness-sort of garden, which is why they came to us."

The young Laki refused to go to University, as the campus did not have a swimming pool and he could not countenance a place where he could not pursue his favourite pastime-diving. The other passion then was drawing and so his mother latched on to the idea of him becoming an architect. An opening in a private firm saw him soon learning the draughtsman's art ('it was drawing anyway"), but inequalities within the company raised his ire and when he formed a trade union, he was soon summarily dismissed. A long Labour Tribunal case followed, which Laki and co. won.

"It was good fortune I got sacked," says Laki smiling, for Geoffrey Bawa who had seen Laki's work asked him to join his firm. "It was from there that I really got into the aesthetic world for in our middle-class, politically oriented family, art was not very important." Whilst imbibing architecture, among other things he drew trees for Geoffrey's architectural drawings, not the stick and 'bole' design, but real trees, all because he loved to draw them. He finds it faintly amusing that this has sort of set a precedent. "If you take an architectural book from Indonesia, Singapore, this part of the world, you'll find they all follow this style which we began then," he says.

There followed a fruitful period with Ena de Silva, famous for her batiks. Ena and he, he recalls shared the same interests, stars, books, butterflies and poetry. "We had a great time travelling all over the country." He loved the spells outside so much that the idea of actually living away from the city took root. As the constraints of running a company also cramped his style, in the early 70s, he took off to Dambulla, to grow onions and chillies.

It seems a radical change of lifestyle, but not so to Laki. "By then I had already moved to Muthurajawela, because of all the birds and the marsh and when my brother bought this property, I told him I'd go there and farm." He sees this as a productive period in terms of his art, if not agriculture. "I did a lot of drawings of the Dry Zone and they are all floating around somewhere.

The farming was great, he says, because it gave him an excuse to play with water and develop a major irrigation system there. But when it came to selling produce, the system being what it was, failed him, as it has so many, lesser fortunate farmers, driving them even to suicide.

What he did do, farming aside, was grow the forest back and when Geoffrey Bawa, designing the Kandalama hotel, wanted some 150 large trees for his landscape to maintain that environmentally friendly atmosphere, Laki was able to transplant them with little detriment to his own property. Growing trees is a passion he would love more people to cultivate and he derives great joy in bringing little known trees to the city. Just outside the window of his Rajagiriya home, he points to a fine specimen and names it as blue veralu. "You would never have seen it, but I've taken seeds and planted them in many places,' he says. "Geoffrey has one in Lunuganga and there's one of these trees behind the Flower Rd petrol shed. The fruits are a sort of royal blue, rather sour."

He also unearthed a huge rock on the Dambulla property and around it has built, over the years, what one visitor has described, 'as a living work of art.' "You could say that house, with all its rocks, and water running through, has been my major work-it has gone on for 25 years." The 'Diyabubulu' house has merited mention in books like The Tropical Asian House which devotes one chapter to its unique design. Not that Laki likes the publicity that much...then everyone wants to come and see it, he says, only half joking. "It disturbs the birds and animals." All his land is forested and he says he still likes to spend as much time as he can there. "On a good year, I might spend 30% of my time there. This year I was lucky, I got to spend more."

"The Dry Zone forest is fascinating to draw because it's full of patterns, thorns, scrubs. I've done hundreds of scrub paintings." What's sad is that so many of these drawings seem to have been lost forever, having been given to someone with whom he's now lost touch, who promised to put them into a book. Most of them were big portraits of trees, also a series of Dry Zone drawings. But Laki is philosophical. "Maybe they'll turn up, many years after I'm dead. Sometimes I think I'm going to draw them all over again."

"I must have done thousands of drawings over the years and God knows where they are." There are also many batik murals and stage sets, commissioned by various people. The Sinharaja drawings, though, he likes having around, "because they remind me of the fun and games we had there."

There are also hundreds of 'owl' works, another of his pet subjects. Why owls? Strangely, because when he was a child, he was terrified of them, of the 'devil bird' associations. "Though I loved birds, owls were a part of the nightmare bird life. Later, however that changed and now very often, when I draw, I find an owl creeping in. There are many owl sculptures too, Geoffrey has about six and there's a thundering one in Kandalama hotel." Plans of bringing out a 'Laki's book of owls' are also floating around in his head, he says.

With the aid of a digital camera, a recent acquisition, Laki now keeps some track of his work, maintaining a catalogue of sorts.

"Those days I couldn't even sell a drawing for Rs 500," he reminisces. These days, a Laki Senanayake is indeed, a prized possession. But what's heartening for all admirers of his work is that the barebodied artist, is likely to continue drawing. The urge is still very strong.

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