Nethra Samarawickrama is a B.A. degree holder in Politics and Writing, Ithaca College, New York State, USA. Nethra conducted the research for this exhibition.
“Sybil: Art of Sybil Wettasinghe,” an exhibition at Theerta Red Dot Gallery is a retrospective voyage for the art lovers, on the work of artist, author and illustrator, Sybil Wettasinghe. Over her 60-year long career, Wettasinghe’s artistic output has encapsulated a variety of mediums ranging from book illustrations and children’s novels to newspaper sketches and batik prints. Wettasinghe undertook her first major artistic assignment at the age of 15 when she illustrated the Nava Maga Standard 5 Reader, the first book to be printed in colour in Sri Lanka. In 1948, after completing her SSC examinations, Wettasinghe joined the Lankadeepa as a graphic artist and proceeded to illustrate stories for the Times, Silumina, Sarasaviya, Daily News and Janatha newspapers. In 1952, she made her first attempt at storytelling through her juvenile novel ‘Kuda Hora,’ which gained popularity overnight. Since then, this book has captivated the imagination of several generations of Lankan children and acquired a wide international readership upon being translated into seven languages. A prolific writer as well as an illustrator, Wettasinghe has produced over 200 books over the course of her career.
Wettasighe's newspaper illustrations and children's books are characterized primarily by their idealization of rural Sri Lanka. Mired in folk culture, her stories frequently invoke the imagery, festivities and rituals that form an integral part of village life. However, Wettasinghe’s work does not overlook the culture and lifestyles of the urban elite. On the contrary, much of her art explores the terrain between urban/rural polarities. In doing so, she often romanticizes the rural and caricatures the urban. If her books Kuda Hora, Vesak Kuduwa and Magul Gedara Bath Natho sensitively captures the intimacy of village life, its everyday rhythms, traditions and archetypal characters, her adult novels Kusumalatha and Rasawathi provides a satirical critique of the foibles, habits and social graces of Colombo’s ‘high-society’ women. This tension between folk and elite culture, village and city dwelling is one that Wettasinghe has had to confront in her own life. Until the age of six, she lived in Gintota, a village close to Galle town, and later moved to Colombo to pursue an English education. Alienated in the unfamiliar environs of the city, Wettasinghe turned to her art as a way of keeping alive her memories of Gintota. As she approached adulthood, her practice of drawing evolved into a serious art form, which continued to give her an outlet to revisit and re-create the world of her childhood.
Wettasinghe came of age as an artist at a time when there was a profusion of activity in the Sri Lanka’s artistic spheres and local playwrights, novelists, poets and musicians were striving to imagine, express and re-create a Sinhala identity purified of colonial influences. Wettasinghe believes that her portrayal of folk culture was not driven by a particular ideological purpose and was more of an expression of her desire to remember and describe the village she left behind. However, perhaps inadvertently, Wettasinghe’s artistic negotiation of her nostalgia for Gintota intersected in significant ways with this Sinhala cultural revival. At the time, children’s literature in Sinhala was dominated by the trend to translate Euro-American stories such as Hans Christian Anderson and the Grimm’s Brothers. Through her books Kuda Hora, Magul Gedera Bath Natho, Sinnakku Mama and Duwana Revula, Wettasinghe worked to refashion juvenile literature to suit a local readership. By focusing her writings and illustrations on Lankan folklore, Wettasinghe offered children narratives embedded in familiar landscapes with characters and events they could relate to. Besides recalibrating the nature of children’s literature in Sinhala, Wettasinghe also made a substantial intervention in shifting the status quo of graphic art. Through her craftsmanship, originality and unique visual language Wettasinghe posed a challenge to the established boundaries between art practices considered as ‘high art’ and storybook and newspaper illustrations often relegated to the lesser-acknowledged realm of commercial art.
On the 25th of July, 2009, Theertha Red Dot Gallery ed the exhibition “Sybil: Art of Sybil Wettasinghe,” which will be open to the public until August 12th 2009. This exhibition will feature selected works from Wettasinghe’s original line drawings, newspaper illustrations and books including Kuda Hora, Runaway Beard, Andare`, Mahadenamutta, Podda Saha Poddi, Rasawathi and Hoity the Fox. As part of this venture to honor the life work of this distinctive artist, Theertha will also produce a catalog containing a biographic sketch and a pictorial overview of Wettasinghe’s art.
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