Koralegedara Pushpakumara received his higher education in Painting and Sculpture from the University of Kelaniya, and has since then been a notable presence in the contemporary art scene in Sri Lanka as a participant of the 90s Art Trend. Pushpakumara continues to tread the career path of professional artistry with success, and is currently based in Colombo. He is also one of the founding members of the Theertha International Artists’ Collective, a group of contemporary artists that work towards the betterment of the Sri Lankan art scene. He currently lives and works in Pannipitiya, Colombo. 

Pushpakumara’s early works are mainly paintings emphasizing the human figure, highlighting his personal experience of anguish as a citizen affected by the civil war. His paintings express pain and suffering caused by the brutalities that were around him during the 1990s in Sri Lanka, and emphasize the individual being affected by external socio-political and cultural events. As an artist who mainly worked alongside expressionism, presenting quite personal and subjective responses to the civil war, focusing mainly on the emotional effect created on the viewer, Pushpakumara’s style was unique in the manner in which it produced a more mature, sharper and calculated technique of art. His paintings from the early 2000s are therefore alluring to the eye, while also being emotionally moving as well. 

Pushpakumara has since then entered an arena of experimentation with sculpture created using barbed wire. His latest solo exhibition Goodwill Hardware is a manifestation of his craft using the materiality of barbed wire to engage with the same issues of human pain and anguish. Other material such as transparent tubes, barrier tape, tent material, metal chains and nails were used to complement the craft created using the barbed wire. Pushpakumara had also manipulated the space that had been given to him by the art gallery, ensuring that the white structure of the spacious room allowed him to play with the motif of the barbed wire, with the art defining the space and not the other way around. The artist’s aim was to portray daily dangers and everyday chaos through material that is easily at his disposal.