- Imudhu Amarasinghe on her journey to becoming an artist
A pencil and paper is all Imudhu Amarasinghe needs to immortalise the person sitting still in front of her on paper. Since the third grade, Amarasinghe has been honing her skills, and learning how to perfect herself as an artist. Her skills shine the most when she does pencil sketches and portraits, but she also has an avid interest in watercolour and regular acrylic painting.
In conversation with Brunch, she told us that she is self-taught for the most part, except for taking art as her subjects for her A/Ls.
“I grew up knowing that I wanted to become an artist; that was my calling, so all throughout school I focused on my art and picked the subjects that I thought would help my dream career the most,” she told us.
As she left school, she opened an Instagram page – initially to use as somewhat of a portfolio, to draw exposure to her art – but eventually, she began receiving direct messages from people requesting to purchase her drawings, asking for prices. Seizing what she saw as a lucrative business opportunity, she began using the page (@_laser_painter_) to take the first step into her career, and began selling her work.
She even does custom portraits that her customers request, ensuring a level of engagement. She told us that most of her clients very naturally want to see the authentic and positive qualities of the subject she is being commissioned to paint, be it their child, husband, wife, parent, pet, or friend.
“If I present the subject at their authentic best and most characteristic self, they rarely want me to change the image for the better,” she commented, explaining that capturing this authenticity quickly, often in a limited time, requires a portrait artist to be naturally perceptive and observant of personality, and be trained to present the subject with a certain degree of physical accuracy. She shared that those that want portraits painted often feel that an organic, hand-painted portrait can portray emotions better than a photograph.
When we asked her what aspect of her job she enjoys the most, she told us that it was definitely drawing portraits.
“When I look at a person’s face, I see a whole universe; it speaks to me strongly. I feel inspired by different faces and their expressions. And at the moment, my expression is through pencil drawings,” she described.
Of course, nothing comes without challenges and obstacles; embarking on this career path was no easy feat for Amarasinghe.
“I have been wasting a lot of time on unnecessary self-doubt, listening to other opinions about my art and myself, and that’s what made me stuck in constant dilemmas,” she told us, adding that the hardest part of adulthood is to find your calling and trust it, to go for it no matter what. She looks at her life from a positive side, telling us she always knew she wanted to be an artist.
“It’s a part of me I can’t deny. It was very important to pursue this journey no matter how people around me tried to stop me by saying that I won’t be able to live from art, but I didn’t care. To be an artist is not an easy path, it’s difficult but worth living,” she expressed.
In terms of a fulfilling career as an artist, we asked Amarasinghe if she saw a space in the Sri Lankan market for artists, to which she shared her thoughts on the local art industry. She is of the understanding that with the emergence of digital art; traditional art that used paper and pen is slowly being overshadowed.
“What takes me hours to do can be done in a matter of minutes on a computer and will look more realistic,” she told us, but she also firmly believes that there will always be new styles and tools like computers in the arts, and doubts that human nature has changed in the hundreds of years since the Greeks expressed it so well through their arts.
“The Greek expression of the power and grace of human nature survived the Dark Ages and was revived by the Renaissance. We will always celebrate our humanity through new media and materials, but novelty will never change our inherent nature, which we will always be driven to celebrate in the arts,” she told us. She believes people always have and always will intrinsically enjoy seeing representations of the power and beauty of natural imagery, including the human form, regardless of changing art styles and new forms of media.
In the near future, Amarasinghe has plans to put up an exhibition of her paintings and invite a few of her inspirations for portraits she has drawn as well. This would be the next step in building her career, and slowly but surely, Amarasinghe told us, she is working her way to the top.
