BIO.

Danushka Y. Abeygoda is a self-taught artist with a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Western Australia, Perth. After leaving the architectural practice, she lived in Japan for almost nine years where she spent time learning calligraphy, silkscreen printing and Japanese. Although she has been drawing since she was a child, it was in Tokyo and Nagoya where she really started to develop her visual style. She is currently based in Perth where she lives with her family. 

PROCESS

Danushka works intuitively to create her abstracts and illustrations. She may start with a general feeling or memory to inform  her approach, then lets the process unfold. Through her experimentation, play, meditation and exploration she creates a wide range of artwork that includes sketches, paintings, digital collage and patterns. She enjoys working with a variety of media that include pencil, ink, watercolor, charcoal and gouache.

My Journey

When I was nine, my family moved from Vancouver to Perth, Australia, and I kept waiting for us to go back home to Canada. We never did. In that tender space of missing a place I loved, I found myself at the library with my mum, drawn to "how to draw" books. Drawing became my way of processing feelings I couldn't quite name—grief, homesickness, displacement, sadness, the bigness of being a child trying to understand home.

Years later, I traded my architecture career for a longing I'd held since I was sixteen: living in Japan. Those eight years in Nagoya and Tokyo transformed me. Japan taught me it was okay to be quiet, introspective and to live gently, to find profound meaning in simple moments. With time to observe and create, my artistic voice started to find its footing.

In 2011 while living in Tokyo, we experience the massive earthquake. My husband and I channeled our desire to help into an ethical t-shirt brand, and I saw firsthand how art could move people and drive purpose. When family became our priority, I started an Etsy shop, turning leftover inks from our t-shirt printing into artworks that I scanned and made available as digital prints. I learned how art can connect people - whether through ethical design projects, digital works, or simply the shared experience of beauty.

Today, back in Perth, I create intuitively finding solace and optimism in abstract forms and symbols that speak across cultures. My work is both meditation and communication, a way to process my own emotions while offering others a visual space for theirs.

I hope my pieces become anchors for reflection, a source of peace and hope, and reminders that it's perfectly human to be quiet or quirky or complex, and that there's always reason for optimism about who we are and who we can become.

PRINTED FEATURES