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A Painter of Sublime Landscapes
Jimmy is the name given him by his schoolmates. Prabhakara (Sanskrit meaning "store of light") is the name he prefers to be known by. Prabhakara (Jimmy Quek) is a serious artist who has made a name for himself in the Singapore art circle as one of the more promising young contemporaries and a painter of sublime landscapes.
Prabhakara excelled in art in his school days, and his lifelong interest in a professional art career was sparked of by an exhibition he saw in his youth. His foundation in art was laid when he did a short course at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts in 1973. The need to have a regular paying joy postponed his original intention of immediately becoming a professional artist. He enrolled for a business study course at Ngee Ann Technical College in 1974 to study business administration, accounting and marketing. After graduation in 1977 he joined a piling firm and stayed with it for three years. Then he started his own design company working on 3-dimensional assignments and graphic designs. The designer's job was nearer to his heart's love for art. For a brief period he was contented. Like most young men. Prabhakara was energetic, restless and ambitious. He felt restricted working under the dictates of clients and having to meet deadlines. he yearned for freedom unlimited - freedom to do what he liked, when and how a piece of work should be carried out. He was prepared to pay a price for this freedom, and so it was that after four years as his own design manager, he severed ties with the business world and struck out on his own as an independent professional artist. His new found confidence came to him after a short stint with La Salle College of Art, 1985-86 and his many successes in art exhibitions and competitions. He was also encouraged by the support given him by Della Butcher's Gallery of Fine Art.
At La Salle, Prabhakara painted realistic landscapes, still-lifes and figures. The focus was on orchestration of colors and rich textural surfaces applied in heavy, vigorous strokes. Shapes and forms were boldly delineated in a subconscious attempt to bring out the abstract quality inherent in a landscape or a still-life. These early experiments were developed in 1987 into a series of fluid landscapes in which the heavy impasto had given way to diaphanous brush strokes that were charged with an energy and expressiveness that bespoke a mind that had penetrated beneath the superficial appearance of subject matter. This was the first breakthrough from realism to a semi-abstract art form for the artist.
As Prabhakara probed deeper to discover the essence of a panoramic landscape seen from an elevated viewpoint, his paintings attained a breadth of vision totally absent in his earlier works. His 1990 series of landscapes is a felt "presence" of the awesome spectacle of the majesty and grandeur of atmospheric space. The earlier paintings despite being semi-abstract in concept, were still firmly grounded in visual reality. This later series has moved further away, relying more on felt sensation and the creation of forms with free-flowing brush strokes. Always there is this swirl of colors, harmonious or clashing at times, with a strong
red, orange, or yellow, to give intensity to strong, tumultuous
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