Book facts
Laki Senanayake is an elusive genius. Despite a formidable body of work which leaves one in no doubt as to the extent of his skill, he has cared little for fame and glory. An occasional foray to the city for an exhibition of some work gives the public a glimpse of the man but for the most part, he is content to work in the seclusion of his Dambulla jungle stronghold ‘Diyabubula’.
It is to bring his work to a wider audience that the Geoffrey Bawa Trust has published this coffee table book which presents not just an introduction to the man but also a representative collection of his work taken from public places and also from many private collections. The collection is impressive - the paintings and sculptures many are aware of, but the batiks, silk screen paintings, sculptural bas relief, murals, even papier mache and designs for currency notes? This is all Laki, in the many phases of his artistic explorations.
For Laki as the book reveals, art is no lofty pursuit, it is an elemental thing.
He describes the creative process with a singular lack of self-importance. “I just start playing around and then I see shapes- perhaps a lovely thigh or a car. Of course to do that you have to be passionately fond of thighs or cars. To produce anything that pleases you, you have to be fond of something.”
As one long familiar with the artist, Prof. Ronald Lewcock’s overview of Laki’s life, gives in essence a portrait of a man, who sought to forge his own path, unfettered by society. Born in 1937 to a wealthy planter family, the seventh of eight children, Laki grew up at a time when a nationalist tide was beginning to turn against colonial dominion. His father Reginald, a founder member of the leftist Lanka Sama Samajist Party (LSSP), was imprisoned for his politics by the British and it was his mother, a teacher, who held the family together. Laki’s family nickname was ‘the artist’ for he ‘drew and painted endlessly from the age of three’.
It was the early days in Madampe near Chilaw, on a coconut estate which his mother was managing to make ends meet that brought out the bird lover in Laki, who was fascinated by the colourful birds he saw there. His schooling proper (Royal College) began late, when he was nine but from the start he rebelled against the enforced regimentation of student life. Thankfully there was the library and the books on the great painters, Rousseau, Gauguin, Van Gogh and Dali, then Picasso and Matisse to devour. His love for music too soared, from Schubert to Stravinsky, John Cage and Xenakis to whom Laki in 2005, painted the wonderful ‘Homage to Xenakis’ pictured in the book. The author notes that Laki’s interest in contemporary music has paralleled and energised his work.
His father’s early death and his mother’s subsequent foray into politics- she was the first woman to be elected to Parliament in 1947 meant the young Laki’s passion for art went largely undetected except by the family doctor who came to treat him for malaria and told his mother that her son had talent. Recognition came when he won the school art prize - for a drawing of a circus trapeze artist inspired by Toulouse- Lautrec and Roult. His prize money he used to buy that bird Bible of yore - G.M. Henry’s Birds of Ceylon.
So birds and Laki’s art have gone hand in hand and even a quick skim through the book will reveal a preponderance of the feathered kind in Laki’s sketches and paintings. Laki’s partiality to owls, in particular, has been well documented.
Having spurned university because there was no swimming pool ( he was obsessed with swimming and diving at that time), Laki started work as an apprentice draftsman- the work interested him but finding the tedium of office routine irksome, he organised a trade union which resulted in him being sacked. Fortuitously there then came an opening as assistant to architect Valentine Gunasekera. Gunasekera was working closely with the firm of Edwards, Reid and Begg and it was how Laki came to meet Geoffrey Bawa and his brother Bevis.
The Bawa connection would be significant (he worked with Bawa for six or seven years) and the book details the many influences that stemmed from Laki’s friendship with the Bawas, among them, Australian artist Donald Friend who when leaving the island after five years at Bevis’s estate, bestowed on Laki his large artist’s paintbox.
Other artistic influences - the personalities who played a huge role in the flowering of con- successful career, at a time when his sculptures had been commissioned for events like the Sri Lanka Pavilion at Expo 70 in Osaka and adorned several hotels, to start farming in Dambulla. His intention? “To earn my living from agriculture instead of art.” Armed with Nihal Fernando’s ‘Handbook for the Young Farmer’ Laki began growing chillies and onions in the property bought by his elder brother Nimal. It was good for his art; in Diyabubula, the home he built from the original small house above a dam on the property, he could be one with nature- the otters, the birds, the thalagoyas and monkeys and paint as and when he wanted to.
There is more –touches of Laki’s wit as when he describes his fondness for loitering, particularly at the Peradeniya Botanical Gardens where he spent time drawing trees while waiting for the crops on his farm to grow. “Loitering is an activity regarded in our society as being just beyond the pale of crime…However loitering is a way of life and those addicted to it will brave many vicissitudes to indulge their passion. To these I can recommend highly the Royal Botanical Gardens at Peradeniya. ‘Royal’ presumably because the kings of the Kandyan kingdom loitered therein in those days.” The author touches too on a consistent theme in the artist’s work – Laki’s continued focus on love and sexuality and the book has interesting examples of his work in this context from a series of sensual prints he produced in 1972 to the more recent.
Lewcock, an eminent academic, distinguished architect and conservator terms the text merely ‘an introduction’. Some wonderfully evocative pictures by Devaka Seneviratne and Dominic Sansoni (the inner cover an arresting shot of Laki up close with a cockbird sculpture) are complemented by Nelun Harasgama’s spare, minimalistic design. But most of all it is the art- Laki’s paintings that one can’t get enough of.
Thankfully, the book avoids the trap that many coffee-table books fall into, in that it is not too hefty or cumbersome to sit down with. Sit down and let this amazing artist’s work speak to you. temporary art in this countryCora Abraham, Barbara Sansoni, Ena de Silva – the latter with whom Laki began a productive foray into batiks- leaving Bawa’s office to work with Ena and her son Anil, all figure in the narrative. Ena and Laki shared the same interests, the stars, books, butterflies and poetry.
Next would be his association with Barbara Sansoni and Bawa’s associate, the architect Ulrik Plesner and their collaboration in documenting the heritage buildings across the island.
Laki’s flouting of convention which raised eyebrows is mentioned in passing, how sarongclad and bare-bodied, a flower tucked behind his ear, he would sit at Independence Square or other public places, “playing his flute or whistling back to the birds like a latter-day Pan”.
The book details how he turned away from a