The artist is currently busy on his novel project ‘Destination Sri Lanka – Hotels & Resorts 2018’ due to go on the boards at the Lionel Wendt Art Gallery in September. He is known more as a media person – a position he accidentally walked into during the 90s. “Accidentally meaning, that I was actually appointed to create and produce the Sunday Observer Magazine – a tabloid that came as a pull-out from the main Sunday Observer Magazine at the time by Media Minister then and now, Mangala Samaraweera. My tenure at Lake House was an overall media experience which taught much, not only of writing but all else, like photography, travel and mostly people” says the artist/journalist who stresses that when he joined Lake House he was already involved in many spheres such as, interior designing, fashion designing and painting.
Stressing on learning about other things and people at Lake House Prasad says, he was lucky to have joined Lake House at a time when the late Ajith Samaranayake was the Editor of the Sunday Observer and also meeting towering media personalities at the time, Delerine Munzeer and Chithra Weerasinghe (whom he considers his mentor) both of who were external contributors to SUO.
Speaking about the confusion some people create by calling his work ‘collage or photomontage’ – which is a term he too used initially when he held his first collection sponsored by The Alliance Francaise de (Kotte) Colombo in 2016. As he steered along showing his work at numerous exhibitions he came to realise that it was more tilted towards ‘mixed media’ as there are a lot of creative elements involved in the process of his exercise.
His photographic images play a vital role while he enhances and gives his pictures more three dimensional depth by using various other techniques such as, painting, drawing, collage, etc.
“Patrons of my pictures are mostly travellers – both local and foreign who claim that they like the pictures mostly for their destination content, as one foreign visitor who bought a picture (at this year’s Galle Literary Festival, where Prasad showed his work at a private preview sponsored by Fortaleza Hotel inside the Galle Fort) claimed that she would never go to the extent of hanging a photograph of a favourite place she visited in her drawing room “But in this instance the destination has been transformed into an image adding to it the many essences surrounding the destination,” she claimed.
Prasad claims that comments made by his many admirers prompted him to promote ‘Travel & Tourism’ using his new medium of ‘creative image making’ which he claims is a hundred % success and as for ‘Destination Sri Lanka – Hotels – Resorts 2018’ the idea has been readily embraced by many hoteliers, mostly, who live surrounded by beauty and tasteful décor as a daily routine and who are much travelled and seen art at various destinations. “This is one reason why I was influenced towards using hotel photographs as the ‘soul’ of some of the images I am working on for my forthcoming exhibition in September – also because travellers who stay at various hotels in and around Sri Lanka, want to remember those happy memories they enjoyed during their holidays spent in this isle blessed with a hospitality par excellence, among its many picturesque vistas that meet one’s eye,” the artist said in conclusion.