Shaanea Amantha Mendis D’Silva (1982) is a Sri Lankan born Artist currently based in Mumbai, India. Shaanea completed her primary and secondary education at Ladies’ College Colombo 7, Sri Lanka. After which she went on to pursue her passion for Fine Art, at the Lasalle College of the Arts, Singapore in 2003, under a tuition grant received from the MOE ( Ministry of Education), Government of Singapore.

 

In 2007 she graduated from Lasalle obtaining a Bachelor of Arts Honours degree, majoring in Painting ( affiliated to The Open University of UK), after which she spent three additional years in Singapore working to complete the bond to work there under the tuition grant scheme.In 2011 Shaanea married her fiancé Kevin D’Silva, an Indian national and a Marine Engineer by profession with Maersk shipping line, which then brought her to Mumbai, India. She now spends majority of her time sailing around the world with Kevin, which has given her the opportunity to re-discover new directions for her work, opening up new horizons quite literally.Torn between her traditional strokes in portraiture and fitting into contemporary art culture, her first solo exhibition in 2012, ‘Something Old, Something New’ Harold Pieris Gallery, Lionel Wendt, consisted of work that depicted a marriage of the two. A statement on different styles of art co-existing in the body of work of an emerging contemporary Artist such as herself.  Shaanea has group exhibited and sold several work in the past, both in Sri Lanka and Singapore.