“A Life of Colour” …. In Appreciation of Sybil Weeraratne-By Dodwell Keyt
Source:Thuppahis
The first oil painting by Sybil Weeraratne was a vase with flowers. She recalls it without emphasis, as though the moment needs no special framing. The painting still hangs on the wall of her lounge room today, not as a declaration of beginnings, but as a quiet witness to them.
We are seated in the back room of her Australian home, a space that serves as both studio and sanctuary. Canvases line the walls. Light filters through a curtained window and settles across a vibrant painting shaped by memory, colours drawn from years of travel through Sri Lanka and India. The scene feels remembered rather than observed, assembled slowly, layer by layer.
Sybil and her husband Neville Weeraratne
As she speaks, her gaze drifts not towards me, but towards the canvas before her. She recalls the smell of oil paint, the unfamiliar weight of the brush, and the slowness of the medium, how it resisted haste. Oil painting, she reflects, taught her patience. Some things, she learned early on, reveal themselves only when given time.
For more than sixty years, that understanding of time and making was shared with her husband, Neville Weeraratne, a well-known and respected artist in his own right. Married for virtually their entire adult lives, their partnership was not simply domestic but creative, two lives shaped by observation, discipline, and devotion to art.
Yet Sybil’s work has always spoken quietly in its own voice.
One of Sybil’s paintings
Around the room are sketches and partial outlines of paintings yet to be completed, waiting without urgency. Coloured pencils lie scattered across a table, left exactly where they were last used. There is no sense of interruption here, only continuation as though each work pauses rather than ends.
Creativity, in this space, extends beyond the canvas. On the windowsill, empty wine bottles have been repurposed, each filled with finely cut strips of paper that catch the light as it shifts throughout the day. Nearby, flowers and loose petals float in a shallow bowl of water, their colours softened by reflection. What might once have been discarded has been gently transformed. Stillness, balance, and attention hold the eye, qualities echoed throughout her paintings.
A large board fixed to the wall is crowded with photographs. Images from travel are there, but they are outnumbered by photographs of family. Pictures of her four children dominate the space, arranged without order and added to over time, a quiet record of a life lived alongside art, not separate from it.
“I use watercolours, acrylic, and coloured pencils,” she says. “I often mix these media in my paintings.”
It is a modest statement, but it reflects a broader philosophy. Her work resists boundaries and favours intuition. There is no urge to declare or explain; instead, the paintings invite attention through restraint and warmth.
Looking at her now, it is easy to trace the arc of a full life, one shared over six decades with a fellow artist, shaped across continents, and marked by constancy rather than spectacle. There are few regrets spoken of, and no need to catalogue achievements. The adventures are there, but they surface gently, woven through memory rather than set apart from it.
Outside the window, the garden forms a composition of its own. Inside, the room holds a similar harmony, a place where memory, material, and meaning meet.
Her first painting may have been a vase with flowers. What followed was a lifetime of quiet seeing, sustained, shared, and deeply lived.
My impressions during an interview with my sister Sybil.
Sybil in 1956
A REQUEST
Dear friends,
Some time ago, I interviewed my sister, Sybil, with her blessing and encouragement. She agreed that I might write a book about her life and her art, a project that has been both a privilege and a quiet joy.
In the course of this work, I have gathered some photographs of her paintings in the hope of sharing her remarkable talent: her instinctive use of colour, her sense of form, and her deep, attentive understanding of the world around her. The vibrancy of her work speaks more eloquently than words ever could.
The article enclosed here is drawn from the opening chapter of that book, titled Sybil. It is offered as an introduction, not only to her art, but to the life and way of seeing from which it has grown.
Warm regards,
Dodwell
PS. If you have photographs of her artwork, please send me a copy at dkeyt9@gmail.com
