Lahiru Karunaratne

Lahiru Karunaratne is a freelance self-taught Sri Lankan artist with a strong passion towards creating traditional and contemporary artworks and paintings. Born in 1992 and raised in the historical and cultural heritage city of Kandy, Sri Lanka. Growing up surrounded by a creative environment, art became a part of his everyday life. What initially began as a hobby during his childhood has led him towards experimenting on various different mediums and techniques. He never thought of pursuing art for his higher education, as he always treasured and valued the freedom of creativity and the pleasure of a hobby. Only during the recent past few years, he has felt the desire to share his artwork to the world. The constant yearning towards learning from other artists has given him the opportunity to learn, improve and develop his skills and techniques from talented international artists such as Terence Gibbins (UK).

Whenever there is an urge to capture mental images the same way as a traveler captures his key moments to remember on his travels, he uses paint to captivate and depict realism of his mind's eye. His paintings are mainly based on his mental imagination, which arise through the events of everyday life. Some of his paintings are a remembrance of his travels manifested through the mental images recapped through the strokes of his brush. He has displayed his artworks at several leading street art festivals such as 'Kala Pola' in Sri Lanka. His constant creations of artworks of vintage and classic cars in Sri Lanka has given him his trademark name as 'Car Artist Lahiru' amongst the local art community.

His inspiration towards capturing the elegance and alluring beauty of cars sprouted through Japanese professional illustrator artist Mame Ozizo. Through the years, he mastered and developed his skills towards drawing cars and even actively participated in international car art competitions such as the 'Rimac C_Two Art Challenge' and 'Zerouno Art Challenge'. His car artworks has given him the opportunity to create custom artworks, which have been displayed at several prestigious car shows in Nebraska, USA.

During the recent months, his focus has been mainly towards acrylic on canvas paintings and pen and ink drawings of which he has been learning and adapting new techniques towards painting on metal and fabrics. Like the famous quote by Henry Matisse that 'Creativity takes courage' Lahiru is not afraid of failing and learning from his mistakes and is a firm believer that mistakes are 'happy little accidents' as stated by Bob Ross. The passion and willfulness in trying out new techniques can be seen on many of his paintings. Being proactively involved amongst the artist community, he relishes the time he spends with other fellow artists and it would be unsurprising to find him missing from his own art installation at an exhibition, as he would be found walking around and appreciating the creativity of the works of other artists.

Overall, a very passionate, young and simple-minded individual who takes long nature walks and finds inspiration from the beauty of both nature and man-made creations. On a final note, the artist would like to thank everyone who has been supportive towards his artistic passion and especially towards other artists for providing valuable feedback and suggestions.