Timely canvas of uplifting art

Marie Alles Fernando’s upcoming exhibition, Colours that Sing, will be a gift of joy in these troubled times

For Marie Alles Fernando one of the perks of being her parents’ child were the frequent rambles to remote corners of the island, from Nagadipa to Dondra, where she was to imbibe the rural landscapes and life lived to the rhythm of the wewa and the stupa; the jungle shrines for Pillayar and the village temples. Later with her planter husband she was to revive the visits but it was those early rendezvous with wild glade and estuary, lake and sedge that called out to her to claim a vocation.

As she prepares for a landmark exhibition at the Lionel Wendt in early December, Marie’s Nawala home is jostling with canvases. In pride of place amid potted ferns, coffee table books and china is the No. 1 in the exhibition, The Life of the Buddha, a majestic detailed oil painting filled with eastern exoticism that susurrates like soft rainbow silk- full of an inner glow which she creates with an interplay of iridescent shades against mellow ones- symbolic of her deep spiritual core.

Marie is an artist who is ‘a natural’ as her teachers (including the late Prof. Douglas Amerasekere) used to say. There is so much joie de vivre in her art. Her radiant colours are sheer joy celebrating different island moods - from monks under parklands of trees to a myriad-hued evocation of Adam’s Peak in all its legendary glory.

The painting, The Life of the Buddha, was inspired, she says, by the book The Prince by Manu Gunasena. Marie is a Roman Catholic tracing back to at least six generations but also has deep respect for the teachings of the Buddha.

One thing the two sages - one on the mount and one under the bo tree- agreed on, was that humans have an enormous reservoir of power within them. “It can transform not only ourselves but those around us, take us to a higher plane; transcend. And that’s what I do with my art.”

The new exhibition is meant to be a gift of joy in these harsh times we live in, says Marie. And indeed it would be uplifting to see. Hers is the first exhibition by a major artist for quite a while - a much needed fillip in these troubled times. “Colombo needs some positive energy so I hope everyone will come and enjoy it,” she says.

Marie’s style is French impressionism, where little dabs of paint like soft feathers converge to create atmosphere that is palpable, which she makes her own with her exoticism.

Her colours are what makes Marie so distinct, and colour - on this point she is adamant - comes from the soul.

“I believe the Creator has blessed me with this sense of colour,” she says, and it’s hard to disagree when confronted by any canvas of hers.

Such exuberance talks of a happy mind, and the amazing riot yet harmony of shades speak of a vision that is prodigiously subtle and vivid at the same time. Painting is her way to be grateful for the gift.

Her other trademark is the sinuous sensuality of the figures, especially the womenfolk; her ladies seem to hark back to Sigiriya.

However she never paints closed dark places or vistas that suck out happiness. Positive vibrations in nature are what she cherish; the places where the Buddha and Christ preached, she reminds, were lush glades or fields of lilies.

Marie is conscious that what she has recorded and is recording constitutes a vanishing world. No longer do you get the same splendid Vesak at Aukana nor do village polas ramble under giant trees dwarfing villagers. Not even a thatched hut survives as one drives past Uda-walawe or Wilpattu - “they have all been tiled and look very ugly”, and a myriad people from women in white selling curd to fisherwomen from Galle and flower sellers - have passed to a country beyond the point of recall.

The new exhibition will feature 66 paintings, Marie says, with the mainstay being her Sri Lankan landscapes, always sketched on the spot and often with a gaggle of villagers marvelling at this ‘ kalaakaari’ at work. Their ‘high esteem’ for anything beautiful and ‘somebody doing something for the arts’ Marie has always found gratifying.

Also on display at the exhibition for the first time would be Harry Pieris’s portrait of Marie, stunning in a blue net saree, done 25 years ago. Harry Pieris of ’43 Group fame was Marie’s mentor and the painting is aptly titled ‘Artist by an Artist’.

Marie Alles Fernando’s exhibition, Colours that Sing, will be open to the public

at the Lionel Wendt Gallery from Thursday, December 2nd to Sunday, the 5th

from 10 a.m. till 4 p.m.