Sarath Chandrajeewa (b.1955), is a former officer of the National Youth Services Council of Sri Lanka (1979-1991), former Senior Professor and former Vice Chancellor of University of the Visual and Performing Arts, Colombo, Sri Lanka.
He served 29 years of his academic career in university service (1991-2020). He is a product of the Institute of Aesthetics Studies, University of Kelaniya. He specialized in bronze casting at the Royal College of Art in London. He did his Master of Fine Arts and his Doctor of Philosophy in Moscow at different high-ranking Institutions. He obtained his DLett. From Canada. Currently, he is a Professor Emeritus. He has published many books on art and culture.
Sarath Chandrajeewa is “All in One.”
In the Arts vocabulary “surrealism” is used for most artists’ spontaneity or automatic or subconscious creation. “Abstract expressionism,” on the other hand, is often characterized by gestural brushstrokes or mark-making and the impression of spontaneity. It always holds a mythic power over art historians, curators, museum directors, and viewers as the most modern painting style.
Critics, Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg define the abstract expressionist movement’s artists and their canvases covered in pores and drips as expressions of personal freedom. Accordingly, a painting is meant to be a revelation of the artist’s authentic identity.
The gesture, the artist’s “signature,” is evidence of the actual process of the work’s creation. All his creations, especially the following, Awaiting life’s breath, Flying doors and windows, a fallen monument, City after War, The Human Condition, Unwritten. But I would like to caution the viewers reading his painting, as semiotics would say, to look at the denotation and connotation meaning that emerges from the artwork. Obviously, Sarath Chandrajeewa’s forte is his unique ability to work in a wide range of visual arts, between figurative and abstract styles. However, he is not limited to a single style or medium for his expressions. All his work encapsulates multi-culturalism, pluralism, a firm belief in all religions, and the need for action.
Once Siril Gunapala defined Sarath Chandrajeewa, saying “Only he can be equated by himself, it is hard to think of any equals. In a way, this is true because He is all in one. Meaning once a potter, once a bronze caster, once a sculptor, and also a painter, academician, writer, teacher, and administrator holding various responsibilities in various institutions, government and non-government.” After 17 years of his previous art exhibition, he holds his sixth art exhibition at the Barefoot Gallery From November 24 to December 10, bringing to our attention all the administrative, academic, and common day-to-day experiences he has learned over the years, good and bad, beautiful and ugly. To sum up Sarath Chandrajeewa’s latest, his sixth exhibition is an audacious attempt to invite us to think anew. Not only his paintings, but all other works of his show us that, as someone once said, “Perfection may be made by attention to trifles, but perfection itself is no trifle.”
