BABU ESHWAR PRASAD was born in 1968 in Karnataka, finished his BFA Painting, College of Fine Arts, Bangalore in 1989 & MA (Fine Arts: Graphics), M. S. University, Baroda in 1992. In 1989-91 he won the National Scholarship, Ministry of Human Resources and Development. Worked under the supervision of K. Laxma Goud. He has participated in several group shows: 1987-93 Annual Shows, Karnataka Lalit Kala Akademi; 1988-91 National Exhibitions, New Delhi; 1988-89 All-India Exhibitions, Karnataka, Chitra Kala Parishath, Bangalore; 1988 AIFACS Exhibition, New Delhi; 1989-90 Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath, Bangalore; 1990 All-India Drawing and Graphics Exhibition, Gulbarga; 1993 Prints Today, Bangalore Alliance Francaise, Bangalore Jehangir Art Gallery, Bombay; 1994 Vithi, Baroda, Jehangir Art Gallery, Bombay. He lives and works in Bangalore. STATEMENT Babu Eshwar Prasad's paintings explore the remembered landscape recreated through the mind's eye. It is a vision of nature looked at with a nave sense of wonder, a landscape that is mystical and surreal in conception. His mind creates and reforms nature, reconstructing it into new harmonies. His imagery explores a psychic map, which he navigates with the amazement of a child, into a world of chimeras, sacred mountains, speaking trees and unknown waters. This kaleidoscope of organic possibilities of nature and architecture blends labyrinths and deserts, heaven and earth in vast solitude's beyond time, unfolding hallucinatory space. "In the background of the whole process of creation, Primal Matter, pulsating with its own life, vibrating with inherent force, seeded with potentialities, starts a new vibration, giving rise to creative desire, the Will to be, which acts as the seed of mind, the imaginative principle. And from this follows the entire series of visible tangible forms"...Rigveda. Prasad's work in its formative years was a way of self-searching in relation to his surroundings: the quest for identity of a growing individual, torn between the innocence of childhood and the trauma of the responsible adult. The earlier period was also a search for mediums to suit his sensibility, so that weakness could be turned to strength. He adopted the technique of gouache on Nepalese paper, evolving a slow and meticulous process that emphasised his naivety. A significant work that celebrates simple situation: like the portrait of a boy smoking his first cigarette in his room; an open window in the background frames the uncharted world outside. Stepping out from the coziness of the family, he confronts reality. He treasures memories of childhood; his games turn into metaphors of life. When Prasad moved to Baroda, he found himself a wider stage. He recognized the games artist's play, and how the politics of play become a preoccupation. His space was theatrical, gestures dramatic, unfolding the event where he remained a spectator, or became part of the endless game. The graphic medium emphasized starkness of images in black and white. His sculptural abilities were demonstrated in Sack Race and Four Mourners, executed in fiberglass, they express anxiety and anguish. This experience helped him to feel three-dimensionality and sensations of tactile surfaces in forms.