Escape with Jetwing Blue

Juliet Coombe discovered it’s impossible to get the blues now Negombo has restyled the Oceanic Blue hotel into hip happening environ friendly Jetwing Blue.

The artist in response to this is reusing their philosophical ethos of recycling and reusing everything some pieces are reduced to sheer atonal minimalism, and together, Jetwing and Ajith, they have been an unbeatable collaboration, going from height to height and stride to stride, with the culmination of the installation in the central hallway reception area, where its impossible not to be wowed by this masterpiece in blue.
The pool with its seated chairs adjacent to the bar is just one of the exciting new aspects of Jetwing Blue with it’s green directory that guarantees that not only the guest but also the environment wont get the blues in what was once known as the Oceanic flagship on the strip, which is now reopened as the Jetwing flag ship for hotel environmental make overs, which is helmed by the super efficient Hyacinth who was originally the receptionist two decades ago at the Blue Oceanic and one of only three female GMs in the country. Interestingly the other two are also with Jetwing!

During my stay in this idyllic spot, now cleaned daily by the staff, making this stretch of the coastline one of the best beaches in Sri Lanka, Artist Ajith, whilst I was enjoying dinner one night popped in. In addition to the paintings he told me he had produced various sculptures and turned them into two trees made from car spare parts banded together in iron.
A true bleeding artist confronting, silencing that eternal solitude, wakened from a requiem, ready to hurt his favourite canvas, mounted and empty, the gobs of paint are squeezed on to the colourful rainbow splashed palette, the paint is mixed, and the painting is ripe, and the first cut as they say is the deepest, and it’s business, call it work or whatever you want, nothing can stop Ajith now with his bits of bottle top lids, thrown away coir rope, tyre parts and beach shells that form a series of recycled paintings run across the length of the top floor. A series of paintings he is particularly proud of and makes for a wonderful setting, as one looks out at all the spectacular hotel views.

Ajith like the owners is a thinker, a man with a deep penetrating vision trying to pierce that elusive realm where fantasy and reality copulate, in search of the inexplicable. He has been creating incredible works since his childhood in downtown Colombo, Wanathamulla in Borella, basically an almost Dickensian London. But he has been blessed to have supportive parents and a more than supportive wife. Graduating in 2005 from a local university where he has studied the science of art.
Ajith claims that Henry Moore and Auguste Rodin are two artists whose primary work is in sculpting has been inspirational while he also mentions his schoolmate Prageeth Manowansa, a stellar assemble artist as an influence. Although he says that he paints first and foremost for himself, he feels his work discusses in deep the idea, theory and conception of perception and the judgements of others. His studio is the kind of bohemian environment that one might purport it to be but he says there is a growing group of youngsters from his hometown, whose minds eyes are being forced open by his experimental art and opening new doors and avenues for them to progress with a similar ethos.

In Ajith’s deft hands anything can and is turned into art, although he prefers more organic material, making him a force as formidable as Andy Warhol during his Factory glory days when he churned out the Campbell Soup Cans to the latest Mark Rothko or Damien Hirst, basically anything fit to be nominated for the Turner Prize or to be hung at the Tate Modern and he is equally adept with oils something that most of these new age, new wave installation fanatics are simply unable to engage with.
He feels that whatever the earth regurgitates is fit for art. His work makes the hotel a first in Sri Lanka for not only turning something nearly 40 years old into something startling funky and new, but also gives that special something that makes a weekend break with Jetwing such a special and unique experience, that even if you are going through the blues the place will quickly put a smile back on your face with a cocktail like one leg in the pool what wouldn’t.