A VERSATILE LANKAN PSYCHIATRIST
By TILAK S. FERNANDO

Dr. Remasi Borelessa is unique and a talented Sri Lankan living and working as a psychiatrist in Britain. While practising psychiatry he constantly battles with his own mind in search of unity with the world, and many other aspects. As a young doctor, with a MBBS degree in Sri Lanka, he displayed one of his latent talents in partaking in the Southern Service of the Sri Lanka Radio. As a ' singing doctor', he made history and a revolution in the Sri Lankan society where medicine had not been mixed with singing at the time ! He later took up drawing as a hobby and developed his talents by specialising in water colours. Quite successfully now he manages to isolate thoughts & ideas that come to his mind and make them soluble in water colours to appear on canvass as abstract drawings to give life to such generated thoughts.

Dr. Remasiri Borelessa held his maiden exhibition in London in March 1995 at Gallery 47 of Bloomsbury and called it, " River meets the Ocean ". It was a great success and to his delight one of his exhibits, " Sundance" was bought by a special visitor from The Buckingham Palace, commanded by Her Majesty The Queen Mother, having read about the painting in the 'Daily Telegraph'. 'Sundance' is now glowing its full splendour while hanging in the private art Collection of the Queen Mother.

His second exhibition, "Harmony" was held at the Ecology Centre in Covent Gardens between 20 - 25, November, 1995. Here, a painting of a ' Habarala' leaf attracted many a visitor towards it. The idea expressed in that paining was a simple one, a cluster of individual, soft, serene and gentle flowers constantly flowing out of the leaf. The painting which was titled, " For our lost friends", had harsh strokes in the back ground. It was meant to be a tribute to all those fallen heroes in the world today, for no reason at all - due to meaningless & dragging wars of one kind or the other. The painting especially touched the hearts of many American visitors.

One of the rare qualities of Dr. Remasiri, as a painter, is that he captures the feeling in images with words (a poem) allowing the observer to embrace the unembraceable, evoke the ineffable; in turn beauty is perceived and heightened, reaching a balance enhancing the two visual forms of art.

What actually inspired Dr. Borelessa to emerge as a successful painter has been the strong bond he had with his father as a teenager, though at the time it had appeared to be very much refractive. Long after when he had to rush back home to attend his father's funeral he was overcome by a sad but a possessive selfish feeling, especially after seeing the wreaths that were displayed at the cemetery. That particular scene at the cemetery gave him the kick-start to transfer what he felt into a painting. This very first painting which he called " The Colours of Destiny " incorporated fresh and withered flowers in the wreaths, a clear blue sky, a prominent bark of a tree, fire flames and emerging smoke all which gave him a philosophical meaning. Fresh and withered flowers depicted the intransigence of life, the prominent bark of a tree was to remind him that though he lost his father from this human world, yet he was still there - somewhere. Clear blue sky indicated hope and the erupting flames from the pyre was a comparison with his father's loss of memory with age.

Feeding three important elements, ' unification of art, science and philosophy' Remasiri Borelessa always attempts to go beyond the horizons of art medium and successfully unifies all those three aspects. By doing so his intention is to allow one to explore and reach the depth through his paintings, according to one's own capacity to achieve the limits. One of Dr. Borelessa's talents in drawing is that he produces something very simple out of a complex issue and vice versa, and gives food for thought to the art lovers in an acceptable and a philosophical way, splashing out the message that simplicity at a glance may not be the reality, but allowing one to perceive directly as it is or at a deeper level.

How Dr. Borelessa captures his feeling with images could easily be illustrated in a verse he composed to go with ' Colours of Destiny' painting, which he dedicated to his late father. Remasiri whispered in my ear and said that those were his true inner feelings which had been imprisoned within himself, for a long time, which had ultimately to emerge, unfortunately, after the demise of his father. His poem " My Father" went as follows: 


MY FATHER