For Prasad Kumar K S, his canvas is his emotional outlet, meant to pour out his mental turmoil on the ills facing society. But once translated into the visual medium, his imagery takes on other dimensions, where his palette shows his steady hand with colours and lines. The thought processes, of both Kumar and his initmate audience, arise from this, each drawing his own thesis.
Collage is his medium of expression, where he brings his life experiences into it, in the hope of reaching out to kindred souls. The world around him concerns him as much, an outpouring of which can bee seen at his exhibition, ‘Resonances’, on at the Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath.
Kumar started off as a painter, but moved to collages as the medium is “very interesting and full of creative possibilities”.
He admits that his techniques of painting do intrude into his collage- making, but it is to his advantage.
“I have a preconceived notion of what my artistic depiction should be.
Although the scope for improvisation in collages is more, I use that option in very limited fashion”, says Kumar of Kottayam, Kerala, whose green expanses have not helped calm his mind.
His pictures are stark, despite the strong colours. The colours themselves are an indication of Kumar’s concern with societal chaos, and tell a story of their own. The medium he uses is magazine papers. There is an imagery here.
''I have a mental picture of what I want to depict. It is not what the magazine has to say, or picturise. I distort the beautiful pictures in the magazine, with my scissors. To my mind, this distortion is an attack on the print media.
But I can overlook the distortions appearing in the media when I stand in my place, in my own world of circumstances and experiences”.
Consumerism, deterioration of values, lack of ideolgies, human rights violations, and the loss of integrity at the individual level, are issues that worry him. They have found an outlet at his solo show, which is on till July 18, between 10 am and 7 pm.