Art & Architecture
Jayawardene’s work carries a quiet irreverence, tempered by reflection. A tension is embedded within the painted surface itself: deliberately spontaneous, rapid brushstrokes sit alongside slower, more carefully worked passages of detail. In her work, the themes and essence of South Asian mythological fables, shaped by millennia of accumulated wisdom, are re-examined as living frameworks through which the modern world is continually played out. Her current practice explores enduring themes of power and authority, subservience and resistance, conquest and vulnerability, beauty, and the passage of time.
Entirely self-taught as a painter, Jayawardene sustained a parallel artistic practice alongside her professional career as an architect and later as a project manager delivering buildings. Throughout this period, she developed a body of work that explored recurring concerns of space, power, and human interaction. As a new chapter unfolds following her relocation to Abu Dhabi, she has committed fully to her painting practice, drawing increasingly on South Asian mythology alongside ideas of space, ritual, and the dynamics of peace-building and conflict-resolution in contemporary life.
