Visakha Wijeyeratne

Visakha Wijeyeratne
Visakha Wijeyeratne
Born	Visakha Bulankulame; March 17, 1935; Colombo
Died	13 April 1999 (aged 64); Kandy
Nationality	Sri Lankan
Spouse	Tissa Wijeyeratne
Children	Kalpana, Ravana

Visakha Wijeyeratne (

née Bulankulame) (17 March 1935 – 13 April 1999) was a Sri Lankan artist, painter, sculptor, writer and social worker. Her husband, Tissa Wijeyeratne, was a politician, diplomat,^[1] barrister^[2] and businessman.^[3]^[4]^[5]

Early days

Visakha Wijeyeratne was born at Sirimedura, Horton Place

D S Senanayake’s older brother, D C (Don Charles) Senanayake. She was the fourth in a family of seven and spent her childhood in Anuradhapura

.

Education

She schooled at

Goethe Institute

and at the Russian Cultural Centre.

Artistic career

Rangamma - The last Queen of Kandy Painting by Visakha Wijeyeratne

Visakha Wijeyeratne was an ardent artist. Her style was a post-impressionistic style in oil on canvas - using primarily a yellow ochre base colour and building up layers until she finished her product.

In 1967 she moved to St. Gallen, a city on the German side of Switzerland. Working and living alone, she trained in hand embroidery, and later headed the department at Schleifer’s, an acclaimed embroidery establishment founded in 1865. When she returned to Sri Lanka, she started a cottage industry to revive ancient Sinhala embroidery techniques, with Ananda Coomaraswamy’s “Medieval Sinhalese Art” as her primary source of inspiration. Her repertoire was in portraits and paintings of infants. In 1974, she discovered that the Sri Lankan art market did not appreciate her painting style, using heavy brushstrokes. She was forced to convert to a more realistic style, a transition she loathed. Her later landscapes and portraits had lost the effect of the heavy brushstrokes. In later years she developed a skill in water colour paintings of scenery and orchid flowers. Her skills lay in painting, sculpture, ceramic art, embroidery, writing, poetry and limerick composition. She taught hand embroidery to students and held language lessons in German, French, Russian and Sinhala.

Visakha Wijeyerate was famous for one of the finest reproductions of the 1815 portrait of Rangamma, main consort of Kandy’s last king,

Commonwealth Institute in Kensington

, London.