Oral Histories: Laki Senanayake

Laki Senanayke’s prolific body of work spans a wide range of media which includes painting, architecture, sculpture and landscape design. More recently, he dived into digital art. Laki began his career as an architectural draughtsman. After losing his first job because he established a trade union, he started working for architect Valentine Gunasekera. At age 18, Laki began working with Geoffrey Bawa at Edwards, Reid and Begg where Valentine was also a partner, eventually leaving the firm a few years later to collaborate with Geoffrey’s dear friend and client Ena de Silva on her Batik workshop. Laki and Geoffrey continued to work together on several key projects and Laki did the large-scale murals and reliefs for Geoffrey’s Triton and Neptune Hotels. He also did the chandelier for the Sri Lankan Parliament Chamber — which was inspired by a drawing he did of a double coconut tree at the Peradeniya Botanical Gardens and the larger than life sculptural staircase he did at the Lighthouse Hotel in Galle. As the interview was conducted above Laki’s welding workshop, please note that jarring sounds can be heard in the following places within the recording; kindly skip over if necessary: 24:20 – 25:00 27:00 – 29:30 32:05 – 34:20 The Oral Histories Project is an ongoing endeavour that will continue after the centenary year celebrations, and the Trust encourages submissions of potential historians and anecdotes to [email protected].