bio

Sri Prabha was born in India and moved to the US as a young child. His early fascination of things scientific was acquired by being surrounded by a family of doctors, but his interest in the visual arts came to fruition when he moved to the US. From an early age, he has been working  with various mediums such as photography, video art, and mixed media paintings. Sri has been exhibiting publicly for the past 5 years and is a graduate of Cornish College of the Arts, and also has an MA in Clinical Psychology.

He received the Juror’s Award at Green, Art With the Earth in Mind and his latest work was given the Juror’s award at Annmarie Garden, an affiliate of the Smithsonian. He is a resident artist at CANDO Arts Co-op, and was chosen to exhibit at CANDO’s “WET” show curated by Diane Camber former chief curator for the Bass Museum of Art. He has appeared in American Photo for winning the Ford, Motion in Drive Contest and has been featured on the cover of The Lead, newspaper in Miami Beach.

His works are in several private collections in Miami, Seattle, San Francisco, New York, Washington, DC, and Copenhagen.

Sri currently calls Miami his new home and continues to be inspired by the natural wonders of the everglades, the lagoons, and the marine life of South Florida.

statement

___My artwork is informed by my love of the natural world and our presence and engagement in it. I create two lines of work currently, that both draw upon this concept.

The first is the Natural Processes Series, which is about the forces of creation that have made life possible today. I am interested in exploring our relationship to the raw forces and wonders of the natural world around us in this series.

The second is the” Endangered Flora and Fauna” Series which directly explores the impact of human desires on the natural world.

After getting my undergraduate degree in painting, I felt a deeper desire to understand the cognitive and emotional processes of my psyche. I felt that a deeper connection to our world could be attained and I acquired my Masters in Psychology. This journey led to the interest in my relationship to the natural world and connecting to it in its purest forms. From the impact we have on it by our actions to places beyond our reach.

The study of art and psychology opened up in me an acute awareness that has led to special processes I use to travel inward to actualize the creation of my works.

For the Natural Processes series, my works evoke the geological and cosmic forces of nature by the use of many layers of acrylics, pencil, gouache, paper, gold and silver leaf, copper, metal powders, sand, and synthetic resins.

Processes of inward journey facilitated by meditation and self-hypnosis are informed by scientific research into the geological and cosmic phenomena which are the underlying components of my paintings.

The interactions and processes of the cosmic elements such as fire, water, air, and earth represent the starting point for my work. I use color to capture the sentiment and mood of evolving atmospheres, and natural phenomena. I make linear and organic lines to parallel forms and impressions I perceive from nature. Shapes that repeat in my works are also drawn from observing nature, and interpreting how things may have formed in the distant past.

During my process of creation, materials are scraped, sanded, eroded, layered, built up, reduced, or scorched. One of my favorite materials is resin as it gives me an exacting amount of control over paints and dyes when mixed into it. I generally use resin as another layer of time, with many epochs poured over each other.

My favorite tools are a combination of gravity and the blow torch. With gravity, paints flow at different viscosities on the surface which I control by manipulating the canvas on a flat surface to direct where I want the paint to go to. The blow torch allows me to propel materials around with heat, and small wind forces push the paints and resin around.

These processes that find their parallels in nature result in abstractions that look evocative, organic, and meditative yet dynamic.

For the Endangered Flora and Fauna Series, my work is based upon the specific species or habitat that is being threatened. The materials are informed by the subject and visually this series looks more diverse than my other work.

I feel this is necessary as the imagery and materials used to confront modern day whaling for example are very different in addressing oil spills endangering penguins and habitat loss for crocodiles in Florida.