Acrylic on canvas.
16x12"
“Beginnings” explores the beauty and calamity of change. Each element of the painting captures this duality. The blue background is a rough and motive sea - disturbed into darker blues by the creatures that move through it. Yet that same blue is the calm colour of space and freedom. Abstracted figures dominate the scene: flying dragons, eagles preying on snakes, but also quieter creatures - mollusks and amoeba - hints at the potential of evolution. Both the eagle and the dragon are nascent . Who knows what they could become?
At first glance, the colours are joyfully vibrant, but they also tell of struggle. In the warm colours, there is the burning of birth, claret blood diffusing through water. These liquids - rich with salt and pain are the beginnings and the substances of life. There are also the pinker colours of sunrise, the juices of ripe fruit, the green of lush, underwater grasses.
The texture of the work reveals the process of its creation. There are visible layers of acrylic, imperfectly smoothed, brush strokes around smaller details and thick, poured paint that has dried into islands of tangible texture.
Change is abstraction. Transformation resists being captured in a clearly interpretable image. But if we do hold it still for a moment, in all its weirdness, we see all the wonders and terrors it has to offer.
Anupa Khemadasa is a Sri Lankan - Canadian interdisciplinary artist inspired by both Sri Lankan and Western creative traditions, whose practice spans visual arts, community engagement, music performance and cybernetics. Socio-cultural issues and personal histories are at the core of her artistic practice. She has performed, exhibited and produced work in Asia, Europe, Canada and the US, including as a touring musician with the Phoolan Devi Opera project and as Musical Director for the award-winning Sri Lankan film ‘Thanha, Rathi, Ranga’. She co-founded the musical ensemble Tangled, and arts collective ‘ Warm Up To Me ’. She has also created participatory audio-visual installations for Toronto’s Nuit Blanche Festival in 2017, 2019, 2022 and 2023 . Anupa was born and raised in Colombo, Sri Lanka, and currently resides in Toronto, Canada.
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Beginnings
600.00 Save $-600
Painting
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