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    Neville Weereratne: the Artist and his Distant Homeland – by Tony Donaldson The first page of Cradle Songs published in the Ceylon Observer Pictorial in 1967 with illustrations by Neville Weereratne. by Tony Donaldson This essay on the life and art of Neville Weereratne is based on interviews recorded in Melbourne in July 2014 and from material collected during fieldwork in Australia and Sri Lanka. The artist and author Neville Weereratne died in Melbourne on 3 January 2018 at the age of 86. He was born in Colombo on 3 December 1931. A Sinhalese by descent and the youngest of five siblings, he began drawing at about the age of six. He grew up in a Roman Catholic family in Hulftsdorp, near to the Supreme and Magistrate courts, but their home was requisitioned by the civil authorities in World War 2 and so the family moved into a ...