Visakha Wijeyeratne

Visakha Wijeyeratne was born at Sirimedura, Horton Place Colombo 7 to Dr Edmund Ashoka Bulankulame and Ivy Dunuwille Senenayake. She was the fourth in a family of seven and spent her childhood in Anuradhapura.^{[1][better source needed]}

She schooled at Holy Family Convent, Bambalapitiya and Newstead Girls College, Negombo.^[1] Her post-secondary education was in Agriculture, Farming, Art History, Art and Foreign Languages. She followed these areas of study and practice over a period of seven years at the Farm School for girls in Kundasale,^[1] the Heywood Institute of Art, at the Alliance Francaise, Goethe Institute and at the Russian Cultural Centre.

Wijeyeratne's artistic style was post-impressionistic in oil on canvas, using primarily a yellow ochre base colour and building up layers.

In the 1960s, she learnt embroidery whilst living in St. Gallen, Switzerland. ^[1] When she came back to Sri Lanka, she started to revive Sinhala embroidery, teaching others.^[1] Her inspiration was a book by Ananda Coomaraswamy, Medieval Sinhalese Art.^[1] This work provided employment for village women.^[1]

Wijeyeratne continued to paint, but had to change to using styles which art buyers preferred.^[1] She made copies of works including the 1815 portrait of Rangamma, a consort of Sri Vikrama Rajasinha of Kandy.^[1] She was commissioned in 1981 to paint President Junius Richard Jayewardene.^[1]

She spent four years in Paris as the wife of the Sri Lankan ambassador, and sold work during that time.^[1] Those who bought her work included politicians Helmut Schmidt and Jeremy Thorpe, and Devi Sukarno of Indonesia.^[1]