Saturday 21 / December / 2024
Muscat: For Naline Kodikara, a Sri Lankan artist, art is a service and she is a practitioner of a unique technique called “Coffee Art.”
She aims to make others happy by exhibiting her paintings.
Today, the Times of Oman (TOO) is featuring Kodikara and her passion for the arts in its #OmanPride campaign.
She is an expert in drawing with coffee, a medium that she has perfected by herself.
Kodikara explained that she started experimenting with coffee as a medium when she was once alone at her daughter’s house in Australia and wanted to draw but did not have any material to use.
“I tried to paint using a solution of coffee and with a stick in the absence of a paint brush; the painting came out well and that spurred me to continue using coffee for painting,” Kodikara said.
She has now perfected the technique of “Coffee Art,” which is unique to her and now wishes to pass on this unique technique to the next generation and to be of service to humanity.
Kodikara’s paintings are based on her life experiences, Sri Lankan culture, religion, folklore, philosophy, history and scenery, including the scenic beauty of Oman.
Kodikara is a born artist, who discovered her inherent talent later in her life.
“I had a skill for painting in my childhood, but I thought it was a passing interest,” she told TOO.
According to her, she painted her first creation for her first child, who wanted to find out why she was not in her parent’s wedding photograph.
“For the child, it is not possible to visualise a family without her in it. So I drew a picture and she called it as ‘Me and my mother,’” Kodikara said.
For the next 35 years, she did not touch a brush, as she had many other things that took up her time.
Kodikara worked as a pre-school teacher for 25 years in Sri Lanka and Nigeria, happily married to an eminent educationist in Sri Lanka: Somabandhu Kodikara, the current Principal of the Sri Lankan School Muscat.
According to her, coming to the Sultanate is the best thing that happened to her career as an artist.
The peaceful atmosphere and sedentary life style she leads here with ample free time was the catalyst, which made her explore her talent as an artist.
Kodikara’s paintings will be on display at the Art Café at Hotel City Seasons, Al Khuwair during the month of February. A large number of “Coffee Art” work is on display at the Art Café, along with colourful paintings made with oil and acrylic.
The exhibition was inaugurated opened on February 3 by M K Pathmanadan, Ambassador of Sri Lanka in Oman.
Kodikara hosted her first art exhibition at the National Art Gallery in Sri Lanka and the second at Hotel Al Falaj. This is her third art exhibition.
“My aim is to host an exhibition solely of coffee paintings one day,” she said.
Prominent among the paintings on display are paintings created with the coffee of Tutankhamun, traditional Sri Lankan motifs, souq scenes and the people of Oman.
