Water of Life

This landmark exhibition highlights Karunaratne’s profound impact that evoke rhythm, energy, and dissonance. His unique approach draws influences from American Abstract Expressionism as well as Buddhist and Zen philosophies. A graduate of the Government College of Fine Arts in Colombo (1958), Karunaratne studied under renowned artists Stanley Abeysinghe and David Paynter. He later received a Japanese Government Scholarship to study at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music (1961) and a Fulbright Award to attend the Pratt Institute in New York (1966). Karunaratne’s academic influence continued as a lecturer at the Institute of Aesthetic Studies, University of Kelaniya, Colombo.

Writing on the artist’s life and practice, art writer and curator Jyoti Dhar notes “Karunaratne’s is an intuitive, instinctual and embodied process; one where the egoic mind is stilled, and the autonomy of the activity takes over. Jyoti Dhar also considers H.A. Karunaratne’s immense influence on the development of the abstract movement in Sri Lanka “Considering H.A. Karunaratne’s work against a heady mix of internationalism and war-instigated existentialism may help us to see the artist’s practice in a different light – and his reasons to pursue abstraction when he returned to Sri Lanka and began teaching in the late 1970s and 1980s.”