/ARTS WEEKLY/SRI LANKA: Where Pavement Artists Still Rule

By Amantha Perera Reprint | | Print |

Amantha Perera

COLOMBO, Mar 21 2005 (IPS) - The Sri Lankan capital’s weekly open-air art market comes alive amidst an odd set of neighbours. It’s not unusual to see a mahout tend to a tusker about 10 meters from where artists sell their work.

Hung along the side the of the iron fence of Viharamaha Devi Park, Colombo’s largest public recreational area, the paintings hide lovers cavorting in the gardens – away from the passing public.

The artists, however, are more concerned about the crows hovering above and the wind than disturbing the couples close by.

”There is no chance, the wind will keep kicking them down from the fence and the vehicles will keep kicking the dust up,” a street cleaner mumbled mostly to himself seeing the artists scrambling from one fallen painting to another.

A white car slowed down and a middle-aged couple stares through the windows at a painting depicting Lord Buddha.

Twenty-seven-year-old Manjula Talduwa gets perky when he sees the couple. ”Look at the car, it is not a luxury car, it is an ordinary car, we have made art affordable to the middle class,” he says cheerfully while walking up to the potential buyers.

It has been almost a year since Talduwa, a final year student at the Institute of Aesthetic Studies of the Kelaniya University, Colombo first started hawking his paintings on the pavement alongside the Viharamaha Devi Park.

Last April just before the traditional Sinhala and Tamil New Year Festival, Talduwa and a group of fellow undergraduates faced a severe cash crunch. To overcome it, they collected some of the paintings they had in their rooms and brought them to the pavement. Since then he has been returning to the pavement every weekend, only taking a break during exams.

Business was good at the beginning. The artists would start lining up around 7.30 pm and were in business till about midnight.

”We were selling 10 to 15 paintings per week,” Talduwa recalls. His colleague Praveen Gekeeyanage sold 39 pieces within one week during the initial period.

The going rate for paintings on canvas by Talduwa and his friends can be from 2,500 to 9,000 rupees (25 to 90 U.S. dollars).

Two weeks back Talduwa bought a mini-van worth around one million rupees (10,000 U.S. dollars) from the proceeds he made on the pavement.

The location was not chosen by accident. In front of the open air gallery is the Kalabavana, a national exhibition centre that holds periodic exhibitions and other festivals. The same busy thoroughfare annually hosts the Kala Pola, where works by local craftsmen and artists are sold at temporary stalls set up on the same pavements.

According to Talduwa, artists by venturing on to the sidewalk also make their work more accessible to the ordinary citizen.

”Earlier we were limited to exhibitions and one slot would cost something like 15,000 rupees (150 U.S. dollars) and a painting would cost that much. People can’t afford that,” he tells IPS. ”Now we have buyers who come in three-wheelers.”

Chiranthi Gunwardena is a third year undergraduate. She is yet to participate in an exhibition but is a regular on the pavement.

”At the galleries the crowd is very select; it is the art buying crowd. Here it is different, any one can come and buy, and there are no overheads on our part,” she says.

All three point out that buyers come from every walk of life and are interested in every thing from realistic representations of Buddhist temples to more modern abstract brush work.

”Most of the buyers are mainly from Colombo. We rarely get buyers from the outstations,” reveals Gekeeyange. The three artists though are not from the capital.

To Talduwa even such a saturated market is better than before.

”We only had 93 buyers previously who are collectors. Now we get many first time buyers who sometimes only have one painting in their home.”

Making art more accessible and affordable has also meant that it has become anyone’s market.

Little further from the three students along the same pavement, the brush work turns into paintings of flowerpots, sunset at the beach and elephants. At the last seller’s stand it is ‘tsunami oil paintings for sale’.

But the lucrative potential of the pavement market is also attracting experienced commercial artists who are keen to cash-in on buyers who are not fussy art collectors.

”We can’t help it, we came here first, but that does not mean that we can stop any one from coming,” says Gekeeyanage.

The latecomers, however, are driving the prices down, according to Talduwa. ”For some of them it is like a conveyor belt, they give what people want. And there are some who sell as low as 500 rupees (five U.S. dollars).”

The buyers who at the beginning were more appreciative of the experimental works now seem to be looking for much more down to earth representations like those of fishermen by sunset.

”We don’t know how long this is will last, now it is difficult to get even one painting sold a week,” says Gekeeyanage. The market now opens around 9 am because of the competition and most of the sellers transport their work in vehicles.

Talduwa meanwhile bargains with the couple in the white car, finally selling his painting. ”That was a lucky break,” he says, pocketing the money.

”But this will not last for long. From next week, I am thinking of shifting to another place, near the Colombo University,” adds Talduwa. The pioneer of the pavement art gallery has indeed cast his eyes on another spot.