Though fate has decreed that Tissa Ranasinghe should live abroad it has not prevented him from gaining a heroic position among the pioneers of modern art in Sri Lanka. Though he has been a resident of England from the 1970s his strong attachment to the country of his birth has compelled him to make constant visits to Sri Lanka, the source of his spiritual sustenance.

Tissa Ranasinghe does not claim to have been a child prodigy or to have shown precocious talent as a sculptor. The development of his career progressed slowly and steadily through an extraordinary devotion to the creative life. He relentlessly pursues his goal of excellence in his work. In 1949 he entered the Govt. College of Fine Arts where he successfully completed a two year diploma course in painting. His achievements as a competent painter are reflected in the prizes he won at islandwide art competitions. The works of those years as a painter display his profound interest in the national tradition of Buddhist painting as well as his deep understanding of the western tradition of realism. Subsequently he transferred his allegiance from painting to sculpture . From 1954 to 1958 he studied at the Chelsea School of Art in London where he completed a diploma course in sculpture. He acquired his knowledge of bronze casting at the Royal College of Art, London from 1961 to 1963. In 1971 he was appointed principal of the Government College of Fine Arts, Sri Lanka where he proved himself to be the only worthy successor to eminent predecessors like J P A Perera, David Payntery and Stanley Abeyesinghe.

Styles adopted by contemporary sculptors range from complete realism to completely non-figurative sculpture. The sculpture of Tissa Ranasinghe is neither an imitation of nature nor an autonomous creative activity where all resemblance to natural objects is eliminated. In terms of style Tissa Ranasinghe's sculpture is an amalgamation of the two extremes.

Throughout his artistic career whether as painter or sculptor Tissa Ranasinghe's art was nourished by a variety of sources: traditional Sinhalese painting, sculpture and folk arts, and modern art in all its manifestations though not necessarily in that order. Human and animal forms constitute the central point of departure of Tissa Ranasinghe's sculptural language. His work is a simplification, stylization or transformation of the natural object it represents. The aim of his transformation of natural objects is not to fit them into a pure decorative scheme but to create a structure of expressive forms. His powerful dominating sculpture of the show, Visvakarma has the general form of a human figure but is composed of a world of ambiguous invented forms to buttress the attributes of the patron deity of arts and crafts.

Martin Wickramasinghe with reference to modern Sri Lankan sculpture wrote: The recent exhibition of sculpture by contemporary Ceylonese artists is the first revolt from naturalistic sculpture. Tissa Ranasinghe's exhibition of sculpture held a few years ago, seems to have paved the way for the revolt of these young artists (Buddhism and Art, by Martin Wickramasinghe, Colombo 1971) Tissa Ranasinghe's sculpture makes an assertion of continuity with the spirituality and humanitarian ideal of the Sri Lankan sculpture of the past while retaining a powerful stylistic link with the subjective and individual approach of the modern sculptor.

Tissa Ranasinghe 'New Bronzes' -  Prof. Albert Dharmasiri