For 24 years crossing the street on the way home, I looked south at once grand architecture which had fallen into an unloved shopping strip, paint fading across carefully crafted facades. Trucks showered the street in noise and oily fumes when Auburn Street was part of the Hume Highway. Travellers getting out of their cars in the wind never forgot that bone-chilling blast. Over the years double-storey buildings were demolished, or burned down or sat empty collecting dust and pigeon droppings. Every so often a chamber of commerce, the local newspaper, or a town planner, or shopping consultant would plead with landlords to repaint their rare old buildings. They never did.

A decade after I left Goulburn, Dissanayake's painting erased those memories. The softly-spoken watercolour artist and tutor had been teaching in Goulburn when hail and rain thundered down so loudly he had to abandon his lesson. "I went to town to grab something to eat and saw this beautiful storm over this historic city. It was one occasion you just had to capture it," he said.

" I just had my pencil and a sketch pad and sketched it and took a lot of photos and that vision stayed with me," says Dissanayake. "I remember doing a quick painting the night I got back, it just had to be done, I had to get it out of my system. You get inspired sometimes by subjects themselves, at other times you try to incorporate several different photos and create a better subject. That was one occasion the subject was a perfect opportunity. I love those historic buildings, it still has this country feel to it. The concrete jungle hasn't crept into Goulburn yet."

Dissanayake says stormy weather kills all the colour in a street. "To add colour I put a bit of red on the tail lights of the cars to unify the painting and reflections come through the wet road surface as well. A little artistic licence." [The photograph accompanying this article is one of several Dissanayake paintings of Goulburn's main street, similar to Storm over Goulburn].

The painting was done in 2013, the year Dissanayake became the first artist to win both of Canberra's major art exhibitions, firstly the agricultural heritage prize and overall champion exhibit at Royal Canberra Show and later best of show and people's choice at the Artists Society of Canberra spring exhibition.

On another assignment his artistic career looked shaky when he was photographing planes for Wet Day at Kingsford Smith.While poking his camera over a barrier, security lights began flashing. Then security people wanted to know who this Sri Lankan was photographing Australia's busiest airport. He chuckles when he says he probably triggered a terrorism alert. He quickly put security staff at ease. Subsequently, the red tails of Qantas jets are splashed across the glistening tarmac in his painting which won the art society's 2013 prize.

Seeing an inspiring picture is one thing, creating it is more challenging. Dissanayake's father is an acclaimed film director, and his mother is an art teacher. The family came from Sri Lanka in 1986 to Sydney, where he attended primary school. His talent was apparent from preschool. His working life began in Cooma employed in IT for the Snowy Hydro Scheme, before he met his future wife, who was reluctant to move to Cooma. So the newlyweds compromised, settling in Canberra in 2005.

"I enjoyed the quietness, calmness, and there is a lot of artistic value around, art is actually thriving in Canberra," says Dissanayake. "Sydney is too big for me, I feel I belong in the country somewhere."

These days he doesn't tackle one subject or scene, he is drawn to streetscapes. "Especially with watercolour, I love to use atmospheric effects of watercolour, I like the wet, rainy street scenes where you have reflections off the tops of buildings, cars and people on the wet street, that gels well with the medium of watercolour," he says.

"I like to paint the environment I live in and get influenced by things around me, inspired by sceneries in surrounding areas, I like to get out and paint in plein-air [open air] as much as possible. Working full-time doesn't allow me to, so I have to resort to photographs and references. Even at lunch hour, I'll do a sketch somewhere, sit on steps and that is enough to get me inspired in the studio to produce a larger work later."

Although he has won many regional show prizes, this is not his goal. He is after recognition from his peers. "It inspires you to keep working harder and harder," he says. "You have to be disciplined, you cannot rest and let it go. I attend life drawing, I have every week for the last nine years, every Wednesday night."

He says people who understand watercolour appreciate it is probably the most challenging and difficult medium because it is unforgiving for beginners. Mistakes are hard to correct. "In a dry medium like oil and acrylics you can just cover up and come back and touch it whereas with watercolour you have only one chance. You have to know exactly what you are doing and you have to be very brave in a sense to execute it. The other thing is the speed you execute it with, it has to be done in a certain timeframe because the paper dries as you paint. Certain wetness induces certain things so you have to be aware of the wetness of the paper as you execute it."

Dissanayake will rise at 4am to make time to paint. His goal is to paint something better. "My best painting is yet to come," he says. "The day you think you have done your best painting you should retire."