This week, Barefoot Gallery Colombo saw its newest exhibition go up – ‘Oto’ (sound) by Kingsley Gunatillake.
Kingsley Gunatillake is a painter, installation artist, and book artist with over 50 years of experience as a creator. His formal training includes a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Fine Art University of Colombo and a diploma in Environmental Education from the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow in 1994. He has been the recipient of a number of national and international awards since 1980.
He is currently a visiting lecturer at the Faculty of Visual Arts of the University of Visual and Performing Arts in Colombo. He has had more than 30 solo exhibitions all around the world, and has been a part of many international group exhibitions and artist camps. He is a Council Member of the Vibhavi Academy of Fine Arts and a Founder of Child Art Studio. Gunatillake’s paintings, sculptures, and installations can be found in many local collections, including the Sri Lankan Presidential Collection of Contemporary Art.
Oto
His newest exhibition, Oto, which translates to sound in Japanese, is a collection of paintings that portrays what Kingsley calls the sounds of colours within his paintings. “When I see my work, I can hear the colours,” he told The Sunday Morning Brunch. “Normally you cannot hear the colours, but in my drawings, I can hear my colours. It’s not only for the eyes, but also for the ears and the mind, together. When I see my colour palette and colour practice, the gradations of people, I imagine it is very similar to sound.”
The Japanese sensibility comes through from a deep love Kingsley has held for Japanese language and culture, having spent some time in Japan. Kingsley’s work itself does seem to carry overtones of what we associate with the modern Japanese aesthetic – parallel lines, clean shapes, and a sense of vivid minimalism. Oto has been something Kingsley has been working on for over four years, creating about 40 large-format water-based acrylic on paper artworks (100 cm x 75 cm).
Fifty years of art
Kingsley has been creating art for over 50 years, learning from many masters in his time at the Fine Art University of Colombo, learning chiefly under master artist Dr.H. A. Karunaratne (arguably one of Sri Lanka’s best masters of abstraction, who, aged 95, still paints to this day) as well as learning from other masters like Q.V. Saldin, W.A. Ariyasena, and Albert Dharmasri. “With that practice, advice, and guidance, I finally had the chance to tour countries like Germany, Ireland, India, England, Scotland, France, and Japan to show my work,” Kingsley said. “That experience and being able to visit galleries and museums was a good journey for me at that age. Living with art is a very important thing to me.”
Kingsley’s style has varied through the year, from realistic forms and figurative art, to being stylistic and decorative, and to being abstract, which is the stage of his creative journey he is at now. “I’m inspired by that new kind of abstract art, and inspired to create new structures in my paintings based on how the tempo and rhythms of colour play on the paper.”
What keeps Kingsley going as an artist is the freedom that art brings in thinking and living, in noticing patterns, and being part of different creative groups while also standing alone and being independent.
On becoming an artist
Concluding our interview, we asked Kingsley, who is also an experienced teacher, what advice he would impart to young artists and aspiring artists.
His answer: commitment and sacrifice. “This doesn’t just apply to artists but to everyone – even if you’re a farmer, you have to make sacrifices in life to get good results. Good results mostly come from sacrifice. If you don’t sacrifice and you don’t do the work, that’s a problem. The results won’t be sudden – you’ll have to do it for four, five, 10, even 20 years, but you have to put in the work to become good at it.”
