Jungle trips that gave root to trees on canvas
An exhibition of paintings and drawings by Charmaine Mendis and Minha Mahushukeen
Charmaine Mendis and Minha Mahushukeen, together with guest artist Karunasiri Wijesinghe will hold their exhibition, ‘For the love of Trees’ from January 19 – 22 at the Lionel Wendt Art Gallery daily from 9.30 a.m. – 7 p.m.
The paintings and drawings created by Charmaine in this exhibition are in her own words, “an expression of myself, my feelings, my experiences, my escape; they are my meditations, my relaxation, and the meanderings of my mind, whilst my body is firmly rooted in the mundane present”.
According to Charmaine, her tree drawings are the result of her mentor, Karunasiri Wijesinghe’s inspiration, encouragement and training. “For me these drawings have been a giant step in my progress. The black and white designs are the creative wanderings of my pen, done mostly on long airline flights. My mind just follows the meanderings of my hand, and I get lost in their creation. The colour pencil work tries to capture the unseen nuances of colour in Nature. The colour washes are experimental, I just go with the flow.”
As long as she can remember Charmaine enjoyed spending time in the jungles, and reading. “The love of the jungles came from my father, and my interest, and later love of trees from my mother. My father was a hunter and went shooting very often. It was natural for me to follow suit and I became very handy with a gun and later on joined the Negombo Rifle Club to participate in competitive target shooting.” Charmaine was Club Representative on the Board of the National Rifle Association, the governing body for the sport in Sri Lanka (and as usual the only woman).
“My mother introduced me to dance. I absolutely loved dancing and truly believe that I was born to dance,” she says. In 1954, Charmaine Vanderkoen Mendis was the first Sri Lankan to perform a Bharatha Natya arangetram and in the following year she gave a solo performance at the Museum Theatre Madras, at the Ninth South Indian Natya Kala Conference, followed by performances in Colombo and Jaffna.
At the gala performance for Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip in 1954, she partnered Sesha Palihakkara, her guru in (Manipuri and Kathak) in the lead role of Damayanthi, in Nala Damayanthi. She has also danced in London on stage and on BBC TV when Indian dance was little known. Renowned dance critic Arnold Haskell and prima ballerina Margot Fonteyn were greatly impressed by her dancing.
When it came to art, Charmaine was always keen on sketching and drawing, mostly landscapes of sorts, which always had trees. “They were always leafless as I was unsure just how to draw leaves. I never succeeded in conquering perspective, and was always aware of this,” she says.
The turning point in Charmaine’s artistic life came in 2005 when she went to see an exhibition of black and white tree drawings by Karunasiri Wijesinghe. “I was absolutely enthralled, and it was then that I knew beyond a doubt that this was how I wanted to draw trees. I immediately enrolled at the Vibhavi Academy of Fine Arts, where he was teaching, and began really learning to draw, from the basic cube upwards. I soon moved on to real life trees, learning all the subtleties of light and shade, texture and grain and so much more. When Mr Karunasiri’s contract was over, he agreed to start a class at home, where two or three of us began working together. We sketched always from life, going out of Colombo on sketching trips, even to Yala for a whole five days of serious work, not animal viewing.”
With the confidence gained from his tutelage, they have begun holding regular exhibitions over the past few years.
Minha Mahushukeen fondly referred to as the ‘tree woman’ by her friends traces her identity as an artist to two sources. The first, a deep appreciation of nature’s wondrous forms and the second a passion for drawing. “From these two wellsprings has flowed a stream of inspiration that has guided my development from a young age.” Minha is most appreciative of her mother’s encouragement of her early creative efforts.