Solo Exhibition - ‘CELLSCAPES’
By Shaanea Amantha Mendis D’Silva

At Lionel Wendt Art Gallery
On 15th - 18th May 2015

ARTIST STATEMENT

In my 'CELLSCAPE' series, the inspiration is born from intricate patterns that capture my eye in our everyday and natural environment. From wrinkly textures of skin, fingerprints, veins of leaves, to barks of trees and other marks left on surfaces naturally through time. The intricate textural patterns, which others may take for granted, is magnified to me. I store an imaginary database of these marks in memory, which I put down on paper or canvas. Starting from somewhere, not knowing where it will lead, without a pre-conceived result in mind. The end product is something bizarrely unique to me, organic in nature, enabling my audience an experience that begins at the artist’s eye and ends at the viewer’s mind.

The use of RUST stains in my work, evolved from the pen and ink ‘CELLSCAPES’. The process of rusting provides a further element of chance, as external factors play a role in determining the outcome, bringing the work closer to nature’s way of treatment and creating marks on a surface.

Both these methods have a meditative quality about them, both in the process of creation and viewing the final work. My aim is to have my viewer reflect on the notion that we are all, and everything around us, made up of the tiniest particles that is not even sometimes visible to the human naked eye, yet all an integral and part of a much larger picture.

Says Shaanea, “My work is about attention to detail. I like to think of them as abstract metaphors that speak through a meditative visual narrative.

As a society of people we lack paying attention to detail, or the little things. But it is those little things that make up a bigger picture.
The things that capture my interest even as a child were those details... through nature.

The bark of a tree, the veins of a leaf, the aerial view of a landscape, a fingerprint, each has their own intricacy. The miniscule marks that make up a vast scape are each an integral part of the final picture. Without each and every piece... It wouldn't be complete. At the same time when we consider the universe and how small and insignificant we are in the greater scheme of things... Or are we?”

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Shaanea Amantha Mendis D’Silva (1982) is a Sri Lankan born Artist currently based in Mumbai, India. After completing her primary and secondary education at Ladies’ College Colombo 7, Sri Lanka, she went on to pursue her passion for Fine Art, at the LaSalle College of the Arts, Singapore in 2003, under a tuition grant received from the MOE (Ministry of Education), Government of Singapore.

In 2007 she graduated from LaSalle, obtaining a Bachelor of Arts Honours degree, majoring in Painting (affiliated to The Open University of UK), after which she spent three additional years in Singapore working to complete a bond to work there under the tuition grant scheme. In 2011, Shaanea married Kevin D’Silva, an Indian national and a Marine Engineer by profession with Maersk shipping line, which then brought her to Mumbai, India. She now spends majority of her time sailing around the world with Kevin, which has given her the opportunity to re-discover new directions for her work, opening up new horizons quite literally.

Torn between her traditional strokes in portraiture and fitting into contemporary art culture, her first solo exhibition in 2012, ‘Something Old, Something New’ Harold Pieris Gallery, Lionel Wendt, consisted of work that depicted a marriage of the two. A statement on different styles of art coexisting in the body of work of an emerging contemporary Artist such as herself.

Her upcoming solo exhibition ‘CELLSCAPES’ to be held at the Lionel Wendt Art Gallery on the 15th to 18th of May 2015, concentrates on her more abstract textural exploration through mediums of water colour, pen and ink and her unique RUST stain work. Inspired by patterns and texture and how they evolve in our natural surroundings, her pieces are meditative in both creation and observation.

Shaanea has group exhibited and sold several work in the past, both in Sri Lanka and Singapore.

Past exhibits include:

· DEC 2014 - Colombo Design Market, Sri Lanka

· DEC 2012 - ‘Something Old, Something New, ...nothing borrowed, some are blue’ Solo Exhibition, Harold Pieris Gallery, Lionel Wendt, Sri Lanka

· 2007 –GRADUATION SHOW, LASALLE College of The Arts, Singapore

· 2004 - SMALL PACKAGES, LASALLE College of The Arts, Singapore

· 2000 – CENTENARY ART EXHIBITION, LADIES’ College, Colombo 7, Sri Lanka