Malinda Words: Ivan Art: Ivanthi Fernando's effort to align meaning

Ivanthi Fernando is a poem. So said her late husband Ravindra Devenigoda, long before I actually met her.

I first met ‘Deveni’ when he was a second-year undergraduate at the University of Peradeniya reading for a special degree in Sinhala about 25 years ago. Deveni could write. Deveni could draw. Deveni never completed his degree, but while an undergraduate published a collection of poetry titled ‘කමටහන් රුපියලයි (One rupee a koan).’ He suggested the name for a student group opposed to the JVP-dominated student union then in power: ‘හන්තාන නව පරපුර (The New Hantana Generation).’

That copywriting bent naturally led him to advertising. I don’t where he started off, but it was when he was at Grey Advertising that he met Ivanthi who was working there as an illustrator. And that’s when he noted she was a poem and said so:

නුඹ කිවියකි
සියලු පදරුත්
නිසි ලෙස
ගැලපුන

[You are a poem where all meaning is perfectly aligned]. He secured that account. They were married not too long afterwards]

Deveni divested himself of all burdens acquired and foisted upon his shoulders, emptied his heart-thesaurus and disappeared as he often did but this time forever around eight years ago. He left behind a poem and a couple of unfinished verses in the form of two very young boys, one an infant.

Deveni never got write the poems that would capture all of Ivanthi’s poetics. Life, obviously, doesn’t come with meaning perfectly aligned. The imperfections were accentuated by the fact that she’s now a widow, struggling to educate her children and in fact to put food on the table.

She has, however, remained determined. Quiet. Persevering. Resolute. A poem embodying every meaning of her circumstances.

Ivanthi never got back into advertising. She couldn’t. Odd jobs were never enough to make ends meet, so she designed t-shirts, drew portraits (pencil sketches and oils and other materials I am not unaware of) and story-boards for television commercials. That’s when she had time. And time is what she struggles to create amid attending to the basic needs of her children, working long hours to earn whatever money she could and taking care of her mother (her father, the rock in her family and her greatest strength, passed away a couple of years after Deveni died).

Art critics would know better; all I can see is Ivanthi’s poetry of engaging, resisting and being. ‘Ivan Art’ as she calls it is a commercial enterprise, but it is essentially a labor of love with regard to survival and fierce maternity.

For me, there’s versatility. There’s creativity — I’ve never imagined a deck of cards with one that has both king and queen; I don't know about kinds, but she's certainly a queen. She’s ‘placed’ her art in various settings and I feel that had Ivanthi studied interior design she would have really prospered.

Life doesn’t always offer ideal circumstances and we don’t always get to live on Easy Street in Happy Town. Avanthi certainly does not. And yet she creates happy things, be it a (commissioned) portrait or a t-shirt design that would delight a child.

I often wonder how it would have been had Deveni been around. She might have asked that question from herself many times, but then again life doesn’t give her space to daydream. Every hour, I know this for a fact, brings a different challenge and some days it is simply overwhelming. I can’t fathom how she manages to breathe.

But breathe she does and it’s her life breath that she mixes with colours and which congeals on the surfaces upon which she writes the poetry of her resolve.

Ivanthi has a Facebook page, Ivan Art. It’s a gallery and studio she can afford. I wish she had a bigger canvas. Maybe one day she will. I wish Deveni could see the poetic version of Ivanthi that lives, works, suffers and resists. Maybe he does. I wish I could write poetry like Deveni did. All I know is that Ivanthi Fernando’s life and work inspire me. Maybe one day, her two sons will write the poetry of their mother’s life and her struggle to perfectly align meaning in their lives.

We must wait.

malindadocs@gmail.com

['The Morning Inspection' is the title of a column I wrote for the Daily News from 2009 to 2011, one article a day, Monday through Saturday. This is 190th article in the new series but it was not published perhaps because it was seen to be controversial. Links to previous articles in this new series are given below]

07 August 2023

Ivan Art: Ivanthi Fernando's effort to align meaning

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