Achala Gunawardhana

As a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Institute of Aesthetic Studies, University of Kelaniya, Achala Gunawardhana held her first solo exhibition in 2008 in Sri Lanka followed by several local art exhibitions and she has also taken part in several international art exhibitions. These include the China Beijing Biennale Art Exhibition in 2010, The 21st Art International Open Exhibition Korea, in 2014, The 22nd Art International Open Exhibition, Korea in 2015, The International Workshop, China in 2016, Korea, in 2017. At present, she is working as an art teacher attached to a government school in Sri Lanka. Whilst performing her duties as an art teacher, she also works as the Directress of Art Way Institute, a well-established Academy of Arts in Sri Lanka.

Being a lover of nature, she dedicates much of her time to recreate nature on canvas. For her, shapes and colours derived from nature have created various forms of energy on the coloured surface developed through many layers of colour made by zig-zag brush strokes. The shapes that emerge through these colours sometimes are portrayed in her paintings as incomplete or not-properly developed shapes.

These half-developed or apparently developing shapes reach the stage of real completion in the viewer's mind. The viewer can either find traces of a particular scene that had been seen before or develop natural scenery that had never ever been seen before.