Gamini Ratnavira

A rainforest, painted from memory, is the whole of Gamini Ratnavira’s art. Born in Colombo in 1949, he was taken young into the forests of Sri Lanka by his father, Sardha Ratnavira, a gemologist who passed a love of the island’s wildlife to both his sons; the hours spent watching birds and animals became the material the painter has drawn on ever since. He taught himself to paint at nineteen, working from a photographic memory and years in the field rather than any academy, and set out to share the beauty of the rainforest with those who would never walk into it.

His eye for accuracy made him the illustrator of record for the island’s fauna. He illustrated the standard works Birds of Sri Lanka and Mammals of Sri Lanka, designed thirty-eight of the country’s postage stamps, and worked on a set of elephant stamps for the World Wildlife Fund, guiding Prince Philip through the Sri Lankan jungle in the course of it. His life list of birds runs past four thousand species, gathered across more than forty countries.

After wide recognition at home, Ratnavira settled in southern California, where he paints the tropics from his Hidden Forest gallery at Fallbrook. He is a member of the Society of Animal Artists and of Artists for Conservation, and has shown in the Birds in Art and Arts for the Parks touring exhibitions, his work carrying the conservationist’s argument that what is painted with such care is worth keeping alive. In Colombo, the collector Malaka Talwatte has recently held an exhibition of his paintings, bringing the work back before a Sri Lankan audience.

His paintings can be seen at the Hidden Forest Art Gallery.