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about Prakash
Chandras
Brushes With The Soul
-Soumya Sitaraman.
(Originally Published in India Currents Magazine. May '99)
Confronting change as an individual takes courage. Doing the same as an artist is a double edged sword. On the one hand, your work is your therapy, the haven of your emotions conducive to inner peace. On the other hand, its very nature, being the direct line to your soul is potentially disturbing. The images that worked so well and flowed through your hands earlier get stuck and struggle for release. In the process, there is change, reflective of the evolution of the work keeping pace with the transitions of the mind. What emerges is often something startlingly new. The growth reflected most certainly pushes the work to a higher plane.
The transition is due to the inner eye was reacting to different environs. The humid and rich tapestry of India is replaced with cool scenic vistas, each picture perfect, ready to be transposed into a photograph or a Bob Ross watercolor. While the everyday vision in these Unites States is filled with bright but simple, solid colors with primarily geometric patterns, it certainly lacks a visual pattern that is abundant in India. There, each sari has several colors and patterns, often even texture. Frequently, there were hundreds juxtaposed in one frame of vision. Our edifices are all unique and custom built, no two
streets looked the same. It takes time for an artist to adjust and usually after a period of gestation, the artist turns back to work with new energy.
Prakash Chandras came from Maharashtra to Illinois to pursue his education thirty years ago. Free to pursue his interests, he followed his heart and took classes in art. His unquenchable thirst has led him to frequent galleries and museums to "immerse myself for several years in one of the world's most exciting art environments". He finally made a decisive move to New York City to pursue the goal of becoming an artist, studying initially at the Art Students League of New York. He later found out that his uncle was an artist. Prakash's father attributed his untimely death to his vocation and was convinced that art was not for his seven children.
To Prakash, creating is a spontaneous urge transcending place and material. Influenced by art of Vishnu Shinshalakar of Indore, he uses whatever he can lay his hands on at that moment in time. Beauty is everywhere, from the odd to the ordinary. Yet, like the Meera, Bela and myself, Prakash was pulled to the colors from his childhood in India. He chose oil paints. "It suits my temperament (as it is) slow and theoretical," he says, his contemplative approach quite the opposite of my own vigorous play with the medium. He deliberates over the stroke, hue, thickness, and blend and analyzes the light and composition each step of the way. Tuned in to colors after years of studying effects when he blends and mixes them, Prakash evolved his own theory, "Linearism" and uses a vibrant palette to recreate landscapes, buildings and other chosen subjects. His latest series is 'My America', based on the places where he as lived and visited in the Unites States. His abstractions are tuned to his emotions and record significant events like the birth of his two daughters and life in India: the memories of "the softness of the flowering trees or vast stars in the virgin skies of India." To him, his Indian background is
the source of the spiritual process that evolves in the color, images and selection of objects in his work. When he travels back, he paints on locale often sitting for hours, absorbing the hum of everyday life. Prakash teaches at local community colleges including DeAnza College and Evergreen College. On 4/17 & 4/18 he has an Open Studio.
About the Author:
Artist and researcher Soumya Sitaraman's vision of art and art-making as a voice of connection and social interrelation resulted her involvement in several art organizations and unique new ventures. Involved in promoting social causes through art, Soumya has organized successful exhibitions at the Triton Museum of Art, and The Euphrat Museum of Art. Soumya serves on several boards and committees throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. She is also an active member of AAWAA: The Asian American Women's Art Association.
http://www.webcom.com/ranjini/
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