Binithi Nadia Karunanayaka

Role Model

Role Model portrays my mother as a teenager. She was similar to my age in the captured image when I created this piece. At the time, I was 16, having difficulty figuring my identity out, and I would most often look for guidance from my mother through difficult times. So this artwork is dedicated to my mother's significant influence on my identity. The artwork uses the creative style of paper quilling, which I practiced as a child to create Birthday cards. I choose this medium as it captures my mother's characteristics and essence with the illusion of making an exciting appeal to the eye.

Artist biography

Binithi Nadya Karunanayaka is a 21-year-old emerging artist based in Calgary. She is an undergraduate pursuing a Bachelor of Arts in Urban Studies at the University of Calgary. Born in Sri Lanka, her South Asian ethnicity significantly inspires her creative process. She found a passion for capturing diverse identities through a series of portraits with design elements representing the essence of the individuals. She has explored realism, surrealism and abstraction and the use of 3D mediums within her work. She looks forward to exploring the fine-art approach in the built environment as she aspires to follow a career path in Urban Design and Architecture.

How did you start your art practice?

"Role Model" artwork practices realism portraiture, utilizing the unique three-dimensional medium of paper quilling. The work contains a palette of colors and techniques of tight and loose folds representing the facial details that center focus on the figure. The style reflects a painted-like approach to portraying the captured image as a painting (especially from a distance), although with a textured paper twist.

Instagram: @binithinadya_art