Thoughts Print

Sameera Kalupahana is a figurative artist from Sri Lanka who sees the female contours through the eyes of a classical artist, specializing in the female nude and form. But his brush pivots around his deft fingers and surprisingly, he also 'dresses' up his models and its usually fascinating to see his work. Sameera is one good painter that defies the critic and the false notion that nudes are not all that accepted in our society. He dares to challenge them with historical evidence from our past when the kings dared to paint semi-nude women. Sameera is obviously enraptured by the village belle and the women that he paints with a passion. He is sort of an 'object' painter too, but misses all the scenic beauty of Sri Lanka which has so much to offer painters from the beaches to the blue heavens, from the verdant village to the urban city, waterfalls, rivers, burgeon, fauna, etc. historic places, ruins etc. Figurative artists seldom venture out of their subject and Sameera lay trapped in this web. In this aspect, Sameera held his exhibitions from 2002 to 2009. Apparently, Sameera did paint scenes and landscapes lately, but they have been pushed to the background by the veracity and defiant paints of nudes and human figure. Nevertheless, something vaguer but much more significant than a doctrine is what Sameera finds in his art. He discovers the human form over and over again. So far, there is something like a common inspiration that painters like Sameera keeps on discovering. And in this context, they too draw such inspiration that is shared by all painters when it comes to devising and expressing the nude figure or its form and many avoid the subject. His visual sensation also revolves around on women who are passionately garbed in the tones of a variety of colors and arrange their shadows in a way not to over-step or over-lap the color combinations. The distinction in his paintings is that the figures carry a sense of dignity. Even the 'village belle' possesses an air of simple dignity. Sameera does not belong to any particular school of art that emphasise its boundaries like for instance, the impressionist school that restricted its painters to their boundaries. Sameera is not severely architectural slave nor in synthesis, but an admirable analyst in object painting with a unified perception. He has not inherited any tradition nor influenced by any master. So, Sameera keeps painting after his heart.