Artist Statement

With all the awareness and talk of carbon footprints these days, I think there may be an opportunity to present an altogether new way of looking at this much maligned but primal substance.
My work is made using fire and the carbon generated by it.
Carbon, as we know, is what all matter living or otherwise is made of. That includes us. So without carbon we can't exist and lately if we're not careful with it, with too much carbon we will cease to exist. Pompeii after the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius comes to mind.
My interest is to explore carbon as a creative force. Not only in things we can perceive but also in the abstract. The subject matter for me is the medium itself. The material's fluidity and etherealness, embody the ephemeral nature of existence.

Bio

Jagdish Prabhu was born in Bombay, India and received a BA degree in graphic design from the Bandra School of Art. Simultaneously, Jagdish trained as a classical percussionist and has performed as a soloist and accompanist.

Jagdish moved to New York in 1983 and studied advertising at the School of Visual Arts. After completing his studies, the college asked him to stay on as an instructor, which he did. At the same time, he accepted a job in advertising, a field he has never left, working at some of the largest advertising agencies in the world.

Currently, Jagdish is senior vice president, group creative director at McCann Erickson, creating award winning advertising for many of the world’s most iconic brands: Verizon Wireless, Kodak, IBM, AT&T, Johnson & Johnson, Unilever, Burger King and Toshiba.

And yet….
And yet for all these years, Jag has had a secret. In the privacy of his studio in Stamford, Connecticut, Jagdish as been teaching himself to paint. The central idea always being the ephemeral nature of the human organism. Exploring a myriad of styles, media and evolutions, Jagdish finally feels he has created a set of images worth sharing with the world.

His work is in private collections both in the US and abroad.