Fishing for a Living Painting

Ishan Senaka Hewage has a surreal and vibrant take on the subjects of his paintings. The artist sees himself as a merger of expressive shapes, colors and medium that represents the world with fluidity. Through Ishan’s paintings he has developed a close kinship with nature, and visualizes it beautifully and expressively. “We do not require mechanical humans, but humans at peace with nature,” says Ishan. His relationship with nature is made to contend with graphically striking paintings that refuse to see the world in photographic precision but in a uniquely abstract manner. Ishan employs a bold color palette and fluid style to capture the essence of his world. He refuses to use similar color palettes in his artwork and experiments with a variety of colors that enhance his skill at rendering lifelike figures and landscapes with his sharp eye for intricate details and abstracting them. Ishan’s obsession with watercolors convey the sensitivity he has towards nature, as it is a soft and fluid medium. The soft colors build up to darker colors and transform his artwork to rejuvenate the eye of the viewer. He is not only a painter, but a cartoonist and a comic artist. He collaborates with other well-known artists to illustrate for the Hatton National Bank (HNB) calendar. He is eternally grateful for the knowledge that has been passed down by his teachers and his mother who was also a painter. His spontaneous gestural brush-strokes, leave an impression of the post-impressionist within Ishan. He is deeply inspired by Van Gogh and tries to capture the expression and emotion through his painting style. His inner impulses are splashed across the canvas in a spontaneous and improvisatory manner, while it is deeply rooted in nature and its beauty. Simple compositions with large areas of color intend to produce a meditation response in the viewer drawing them closer to nature. His work also explores the intricate details of Buddhist art. Spiritual teleportation enables himself to enter the ancient kingdoms of Sri Lanka in order to empathize and connect with that style. His love for ancient Buddhist art is expressed in his soft and delicate painting style. It is this precision that makes his work unique. Ishan Senaka gathers inspiration from exploration of artists, styles and techniques. His impressionist approach intertwines dream and reality and is modelled through contrasting colors and subject matter.