Angry men with the King I (2021) Painting by Pradeep Jayatunga

Pradeep Jayatunga's art is about what may be called "Schematism" for want of a better descriptive terms, as in the arts of children, African wood carvings Amerindian totem carvings and carved wooden pillars of house Tambarans or Men's houses of the sepik in Papua New Guinea. This art also has strong affinities with the folk wooden toys of many cultures and interestingly if not significantly in the figure representations in twentieth century modernism's. The abstraction and non- realism of the figures Pradeep Jayatunga paints reminds one of the forms of figures carved out of pieces of tree trunks or whole tree trunks in the round retaining something of the form of the tree trunk itself.  This characteristic of Pradeep's art acquires further credence by his predilection for painting the head, torso and legs on separate canvases and assembling them on the wall when they are hung, not unlike a carver who sets out to create a figure from three different pieces of the trunk of a tree (as it is frequently done no doubt), and assembling them together in the final work with some carpentry

• Nationality: SRI LANKA
• Date of birth : 1972
• Artistic domains:
• Groups: Sri Lankan Contemporary Artists