Diyabubula means ‘bubbling fountain’. This fresh water spring refreshed and quenched the thirst of many pilgrims and travelers through the Dambulla caves. It wasn’t a large plot – about the size of two football pitches – and was covered mainly in scrub, but it was blessed with a perennial stream that was fed by an underground spring. The land was owned by Nimal Senanayake, Laki’s lawyer brother who received it as part payment for a brief period and initially grew chillies there. Laki first occupied this property in 1972, but bought it off his brother in 1975. He then dammed the brook to create a large, slow-moving pool and surrounded it with heavy planting. In time it became a lush forest filled with birds and provided various settings for Laki’s sculptures. He also hid speakers in the foliage across the lake so that he could indulge in his passion for music. He was stimulated initially, perhaps, by the gardens of Bevis and Geoffrey Bawa. But Diyabubula was very different from Bevis’s Brief which was conceived as a series of interlocking outdoor rooms or from Geoffrey’s Lunuganga which stretched out to borrow views from its surroundings; it was an introspective oasis.

The house is essentially a simple pavilion built on a platform of timber which is supported on timber piers over a large boulder. It is perched above the lake and is reflected in its water. The roof is cooled by a thatch of coconut husks, which is covered in turn by a mat of the creeper Wel Kohila (Lasia spinosa). This shelter, despite its lack of sophistication, touches the earth lightly and has become an integral part of it.

Diyabubula began as an occasional retreat, a commune for like-minded friends and collaborators, but later the communal ideals had to give way to more practical considerations. After 1980, it became Laki’s main home and it was here, with Geoffrey Bawa’s encouragement, that he established a workshop to produce architectural sculpture. And from here with his friend Noel Dias, he ran Botanica in 1983, a garden design and contracting business, creating gardens for homes and hotels across the island. This dry-zone retreat, completed in 1987, fulfilled one of Laki’s lifetime ambitions.

To visit Diyabubula was to leave the real world and enter a topsy-turvy wonderland where an eccentric Lord of Misrule held court. Often bare bodied, or wearing a stringy sleeveless banyan with a sarong of vibrant colour whilst holding a flute in hand and a satchel over his shoulder, was Laki, the artist. Looking casual, with a quiet air of distinction was his forte, yet more than once - he had been taken into custody on suspicions aroused by his unconventional appearance, though his reputation as an artist soon ensured his release. Laki would be seated on his studio platform, a cross between the Cheshire Cat and the Mad Hatter, dressed only in a sarong, hard at work on a painting and surrounded by music emanating from loudspeakers hidden in the surrounding trees. All around were animals and birds, some of them real but many of them sculptured in beaten metal – here an owl, there a leopard, down by the water a wild boar, across the pond a horse and over there a rhinoceros. He never seemed to mind impromptu interruptions and would lay down his brush, refocus his twinkling eyes and greet with his velvet Singlish voice.

My most memorable impression of Laki was at his open house in Ethul Kotte in 1983. He was recovering from a dislocated hip, having fallen off a stationary motorbike and was stretched out on a large divan-like bed, being pampered by the many companions who formed his extended family, and surrounded by gigantic tropical palms that dramatically contrasted with his creative abstractions that which are simultaneously exotic, modern and princely.

Laki was conversant with the language of nature, familiar with its sounds and the wild. His creations are in fact manifestations of this relationship, symbolic in its reflection of life-like presentations of nature itself. The artist had his own clandestine conversations with the flora, fauna and soil, of which we were witnesses to this wild and wonderful exquisiteness in his landscapes.

The artist’s earliest landscape projects were to assist Bevis Bawa, the brother of Geoffrey Bawa, with his ‘village gardens’ at Sigiriya Village in 1977. Laki later on, further extended these in his own distressed idiom in 1990. His later projects include the ferro cement waterfall in the central stairwell of the Jinasena Building (1989). One of his first distressed gardens was for the colonial home of Thirukumar Nadesan in Horton Place (1989-1990) which appears as a series of ruins. Inside the distressed plaster and cabook (laterite, which is soft and porous) and pergolas he has placed shrubs and ponds. It also has a ten-feet-high brass and nickel plated Falling Icarus. Laki also made a twenty-five-feet high ferro-cement horse, a twelve-feet-high phallus and yoni bath, and a double coconut fountain for Nadesan’s Siesta Park at Nilaweli in 2005. A full size ferro-cement maquette of this horse still stands at the entrance to Diyabubula.

At the Barbeyn Gardens Hotel in Weligama (2003), Laki had created a much larger and varied distressed ruined landscape that which contains a fourteen-feet chandelier. At night, the subtle lighting adds to its magical air. The Barberyn Group later commissioned Laki to design a series of cabanas on a site next to Diyabubula (2014) which they inherited. A central attraction for guests was the chance to meet Laki himself and to visit his garden. Whilst at Mount Cinnamon, Mirissa (2005), the sublime landscape for Miles Young’s cinnamon estate frames the bungalow and the views in a nuanced and minimalist way. This appears in stark contrast to the exotic sculpture ‘Enchanted Forest’ which separates the formal living and dining areas within the bungalow. Additionally, at the Balasuriya House, Ritigala (2010), Laki’s stands on tall stilts within a body of water makes it possible for its owner to watch wild elephants without being intimidated. Similarly, Laki also created a low-cost five-bedroom villa with an infinity pool merging onto the sea beyond at Vairavanathan Villa C-Beyond, Ghandinaga, Kuchuveli (2017).

Nature was an innate part of Laki’s way of living; which became inclusive in his work thereby, reflected in his stately sculptures and picturesque paintings. Versatile as he was, Laki designed ways to integrate into his creations those that which he was passionate about and that which inspired him. Laki’s eclectic way of life was also reflected in the friends he kept and the circles he moved in; his work for Geoffrey Bawa’s architectural creations were stupendous, most of which epitomized the form and spirit of nature, in all grandeur. He was an artist who truly lived as though he was contributing to the natural ground he walked on, endeavoring to become one with it through his idiosyncratic artistic expression.