‘Collette, my father’
The 51st in the monthly lecture series of the National TrustSri Lanka will be on famed cartoonist Aubrey Collette by his daughter Cresside Collette.
It will be on Thursday, May 30 at the HNB Auditorium, 22nd Floor, HNB Towers, 479 T.B. Jayah Mawatha, Colombo 10 at 6.30 p.m. The lecture will be simultaneously transmitted to the E.L. Senanayake Children’s Library Hall at Kotugodella Veediya, Kandy.
The youngest son of a celebrated portrait photographer, Jos Collette, Aubrey spent his childhood drawing. After attending Royal College, he was appointed art master there. With Ivan Peries he approached Lionel Wendt with the idea of forming the alternative painting fraternity, the 43 Group, that was to become Ceylon‘s internationally recognised Modern Art movement.
In 1946 his talent for caricature was recognised by the Times of Ceylon and he became their political cartoonist. Here he met Joan Gratiaen, a journalist, and they married in 1947. His first book of cartoons “Ceylon since Soulbury“was published in 1948, and later the couple moved to Lake House where Tarzie Vittachi was editor. Their witty collaboration documented the political trajectory of the country from British colony to independent nation in The Observer and the Daily News.
In 1952 Aubrey travelled around America on a prestigious art scholarship to meet fellow cartoonists and in 1954 held a large solo exhibition in Colombo entitled, “1954 Faces“, 73 pastel caricatures of the leading political and socialite figures of the day. After Mrs Bandaranaike‘s government came into power in 1960 he became “persona non grata“, and in 1961 he left Ceylon with his second wife, Pauline, spending a year in London before migrating to Australia in 1962.
He joined the staff of The Australian newspaper in 1965 and began another successful career as a political cartoonist, winning the coveted Walkley Award for best cartoon in 1970. He moved to The Herald in Melbourne in 1971, followed by The Straits Times in Singapore in 1984. A regular contributor to the Asia Magazine, his strip cartoon Sun Tan ran for many years.
Always remembered as a gentle, humble and humorous man by all who knew him, he died in 1992 aged 71.
His daughter Cresside is known primarily as a tapestry weaver. She has exhibited in both individual and group shows consistently since 1971, and in 2003 and 2004 she was awarded residencies at Bundanon where she pioneered working “en plein air“in the medium of tapestry.
A visit to Sri Lanka to attend the Lanka Decorative Arts Workshop in 2009 has inspired her to return each year to pursue her own work and add to her knowledge of her father‘s legacy.
When she was just 8 years old, Natalie Ratnavira collaborated with her parents on a book about strawberry poison dart frogs titled ‘Even Frogs Care’ and she never lost that fascination with nature.
Natalie was widely travelled. She earned a second degree brown belt in Shaolin Kempo (Martial Arts) and had 17 regional trophies on her shelf. She played soccer for Fallbrook Fury and Pegasus soccer clubs and toured Europe with her team. Natalie’s love of animals had her teaching educational shows for Pacific Animal Productions and also for Wild Wonders. She herself raised and loved many exotic animals. Her death of a massive brain haemorrhage at just age 22 devastated her family so when her father and brother hold their next exhibition it will be in her honour.
On July 27th the non-profit foundation Zoofari (wildwonders.org) will help the Ratnaviras stage a fundraising event that celebrates not only Natalie’s father and brother’s artistry but her own. Proceeds will go toward securing approximately half an acre in the Horton Plains area in Sri Lanka where a new species of loris was found. A research station will be built to continue Natalie’s passion for conservation. The event’s goal is to raise $10,000 towards the land purchase. So far over $1000 has been pledged.