Ladyspeak

Karuna Sennanayake lives and works in the City of Anuradhapura.

AT the hoary age of 17, my father told me to either shape up in the way he wanted me to or get out. I got out and to this day, I am grateful to him for that ultimatum. I would never have found my calling and myself if it had not been for that fateful day. Perhaps my father knew I needed to `kick start' my life thus.

I had a pampered and cocooned life till then. Being the eldest had its advantages. I grew up stubborn and willful, used to getting my way with things and people.

Throughout my childhood and early teens, I wanted to be a doctor like my father. I wanted what my father wanted and I thought the sun rose and set with him. However, all that changed overnight, at the very moment I told my parents of my decision not to sit for my medical entrance exams. I wanted to enroll in an art school. As far as my parents were concerned, art schools (what were they?) churned out calendar artists or poster painters.

Looking back 25 years down the line, the idea does not seem so preposterous. Small town girls with a middle class upbringing always dreamt about becoming engineers or doctors or even teachers, not mess around with paints and brushes.

I would have perhaps agreed with my father if it had not been for a chance meeting with the well-known artist SG Vasudev. Vasudev who just 'happened' to drop by, saw some of my canvasses I had worked on during the summer holidays and made a mention of how he found them 'interesting'. Vasudev may have made a polite observation but that became the turning point in my life. A short trip to Baroda only strengthened my resolve further and I gave up my graduation studies midway to pursue dabbling in creativity, in art, in freedom, for eight years.

I grew up at the fine arts faculty. Everything was new and different as different could be. Here I was- a gauche, very young (I had the distinction of being the youngest in the college) stars-in-eyes girl in pigtails, thrown in a crazy, whacky, egoistical world of the creators and what I thought at that time; madcaps. It was the sixties and I was the Indian flower child. It was an initiation rite all right but one which toughened me and I believe gave my future work a depth and maturity of thought and passion.

My first exhibition was in Bombay. A fiasco from the word go. I did not have enough good work to show, and as I was part of a large group of hugely talented and well-known artists from all over the country, my work went virtually unnoticed. The struggle continued for years and though I sometimes look back and romanticise the period, only a creative spirit can comprehend the anguish and uncertainty of those times. Moreover, being a woman artist the sensibilities are entirely different.

Nevertheless, times have changed. I would like to believe that we are recognising our artists and the world is finally giving them their due. Auction houses like Sotheby's, Christie ' s , numerous Indian and foreign collectors (like Chester) have done much to boost Indian contemporary art within India and abroad. I have been fortunate to be able to work as I do with different media- canvas, jute, charcoal and watercolours. Painting has given a meaning to my life. It still colours my entire existence and I wouldn't have it any other way.

As told to

PADMA RAMESH