Paintings, stories, and the life between them.

I’m Satish Prabhu, an artist and writer drawn to memory, travel, and the things ordinary life leaves behind. Here, those observations become paintings, essays, and sometimes books.

My Work

The Empty Chair — Original (36 × 48)
The Empty Chair — Original (36 × 48) Dimensions: 36 × 48Location: Vigo cafeOld postcards, handwritten recipes on a refrigerator, an old Stickley chair. At an estate sale in a Midwestern home, these ordinary things set me imagining the lives that had filled the rooms before the boxes arrived.This painting grew from that encounter. The motifs come from my own Midwestern experience; the bright colors belong to my familiar palette. I kept the colors cheerful, even as the subject moved toward absence. The tension between the two became the painting’s way of holding memory.The empty chair is an invitation to imagine who might once have sat there. A house can be emptied in an afternoon. The lives it held take rather longer to leave. An original artwork by Satish Prabhu, created through his own studio practice. An artist-made work, not an AI-generated image. $3,000.00
The Snake Charmer - Original
The Snake Charmer - Original Dimensions: 16 × 20 inLocation: Lisbon StudioHe charmed the painting into being.This painting began in Cascais, with an immigrant salesman’s stillness and Fernando Pessoa’s Tabacaria. Then Morocco entered: doorways photographed in Tangier, shapes from Lisbon, and sketches from Málaga. The surface accumulated geography, Marathi song lyrics, and layers I painted over, then partly wiped away. Earlier versions refused to disappear.The composition still would not settle. Its unlikely solution was a man I had photographed outside a gate in Tangier while following Matisse’s footsteps through Morocco. In the photograph, the snake charmer wore a blue robe and a yellow turban. In the painting, I made his robe black and kept the turban yellow.Those two colors unlocked everything. The arches became more abstract; poems crossed the surface. After so many revisions, the figure in the corner finally held the painting together. Medium: Multimedia on canvas Dimensions: 20 × 30 cm Year: 2026 One of a kind — original, mounted on the the frame. Artist: Satish Prabhu An original artwork by Satish Prabhu, created through his own studio practice. An artist-made work, not an AI-generated image. $2,400.00
Morocco 2 — Original Artwork (24 × 24 in) — Private Collection
Morocco 2 — Original Artwork (24 × 24 in) — Private Collection Dimensions: 24x24 inLocation: SoldSold — Private collection. Not available for purchase.I painted Tangier before I walked its streets. This work began with two painters I admire: Van Gogh and Matisse. I brought Van Gogh’s The Yellow House into conversation with Matisse’s Tangier, reconstructing a place through paintings long before I could encounter it for myself.Years later, I visited Tangier and followed Matisse’s footsteps. The journey came after the painting, reversing the usual order of things. First I had worked through another painter’s vision of the city; then I could stand there and look for myself.The painting holds that earlier meeting of influences, when looking at art was already a way of travelling. Arles belonged to the other half of the story: in the account behind this work, The Yellow House was still a visit yet to be made. An original artwork by Satish Prabhu, created through his own studio practice. An artist-made work, not an AI-generated image. $2,200.00
The Cleaning Lady - Original — Sold (Private Collection)
The Cleaning Lady - Original — Sold (Private Collection) Dimensions: 24x36 inLocation: SoldSold — Private collection. Not available for purchase.Mixed media on canvas · Flagship work · One of two paintings in this signature styleI found her in an antique postcard shop in one of Paris’s secret passages: a cleaning lady in colonial India, surrounded by vases, looking somewhere beyond the photograph. An ordinary working day had travelled across continents and generations to reach me.I could not know what occupied her thoughts. That distance became part of the painting. Rather than reproduce the photograph, I reconstructed it through my own colors, textures, and mixed-media techniques, giving the image another life without pretending to know the woman’s.For me, the work holds a chain of encounters: the woman, the photographer, the people who sent and received the postcard, the artist who found it, and now the viewer. Each brings a different moment to the same image. What began as someone’s everyday task becomes a question about attention, memory, and whose lives survive in pictures.Provenance & Living HistoryThis is Satish Prabhu's flagship painting — the work he considers the fullest expression of his signature style. It currently hangs in a private rental accommodation, where guests have consistently responded to its presence, describing it as the defining object in the space. It is a painting that changes a room.Only two works exist in this style. Acquiring The Cleaning Lady is acquiring the original — the work from which the language of this body of art was first spoken.Original painting · Mixed media on canvas · By Satish PrabhuRead the full story of how this painting was found →Antique Art Stores in the Secret Passageways of Paris — Art Blog An original artwork by Satish Prabhu, created through his own studio practice. An artist-made work, not an AI-generated image. $9,000.00
The Stranded one
The Stranded one Dimensions: 8x 12Location: Oak Park studioA seated figure emerges in yellow against a layered field of violet and blue. Dark contours give the body its shape, while handwritten marks and repeating patterns cross the surface. The figure is still; the space around it is anything but empty.The Stranded One moves between portrait and abstraction. A face is suggested rather than explained, and writing becomes part of the figure without giving away its story. The longer you look, the more the surrounding textures complicate that first, simple silhouette.Abstract figurative artwork. An original artwork by Satish Prabhu, created through his own studio practice. An artist-made work, not an AI-generated image. $600.00
Red Head 1 Original work
Red Head 1 Original work Dimensions: 12x 16 inLocation: Oak Park studioRed hair gives the portrait its first certainty. Everything beneath it is more open: a long, angular face, eyes that do not quite agree, and a pale blue ground that leaves the figure room to breathe.In Red Head 1, patterned fragments interrupt the familiar shape of a portrait. A small bird and floral details share the surface with spare lines and blocks of color. The person remains recognizable, but never resolves into a single, tidy reading.Original artwork. An original artwork by Satish Prabhu, created through his own studio practice. An artist-made work, not an AI-generated image. $600.00
All the dreams in the world (Original)
All the dreams in the world (Original) Dimensions: 36 x 48 inLocation: Lisbon StudioA rolled canvas on a small apartment floor in Graça. Photographs, postcards from the Thieves’ Market, yellow façades, blue-framed windows. This painting began with the Lisbon around me and Fernando Pessoa’s Tabacaria running through it: the distance between an ordinary life and all the dreams it contains.Completed in Estoril, it carries the losses, movement, and discoveries of 2024–25. An easel holds an unfinished canvas. A figure is in pain. A red-haired café patron watches from a window, having found her way into the painting and declined to leave. The teal sofa, globe lamp, and balcony rail belong to a particular room and a particular time.Layer by layer, the room became a record of what I was living through. The curtain holds the boundary between what the painting reveals and what it keeps.Also available as a print Shop All the dreams in the world — the print → Read the story behind the painting: Behind the Curtains → Some paintings arrive fully formed. Most do not. They accumulate — over months, over versions, over what you see, what you feel, what you lose. Every version of this painting is present in the final one. Every person placed there and then painted over is still there — breathing under the surface, behind the curtain. I'm nothing. I'll always be nothing. I can't want to be something. But I have in me all the dreams of the world.— Fernando Pessoa, Tabacaria The curtain in the painting is not decoration. It is a threshold — between what is shown and what is kept. Between the public painting and the private grief. Original painting · Mixed media on canvas · 36 x 48 in · Estoril, Lisbon · 2026By Satish Prabhu The stories behind this painting → 📝 Behind the Curtains: A Final Painting — The full journey of this work 📝 My Croatian Awakenings — Plein air sketches that kept the artistic fire alive 📝 Fernando Ferros & Pyramids — Travels that fed the creative process An original artwork by Satish Prabhu, created through his own studio practice. An artist-made work, not an AI-generated image. $6,000.00
Springtime - Original - Sold
Springtime - Original - Sold Dimensions: 24x24 inLocation: SoldSold — Private collection. Not available for purchase.Spring gathers here in layers: green leaves against blue, warm yellow and orange, small red flowers, and patterns that reward a closer look. Handmade papers selected from India and France bring their own textures into the composition.Rather than describe one garden or a single view, Springtime lets color, paper, and repeated motifs carry the season. Printed fragments and painted forms share the canvas, giving the eye several paths through the same image.Original artwork. Sold. An original artwork by Satish Prabhu, created through his own studio practice. An artist-made work, not an AI-generated image. $700.00
The Wait Series (Agra)
The Wait Series (Agra) Dimensions: 18 × 24 inLocation: Vigo cafeThe Wait Series (Agra)Original mixed media on canvasA small gilded plate completed what the canvas had not yet found. I had brought it home from a journey to Agra with my aging parents, nearly fifteen years earlier. The Taj Mahal at dusk, the artisans of Agra and Jaipur, the time we spent together: all of it returned through that keepsake.The painting had begun as an abstract mixed-media exploration. As it moved toward the figurative, the plate appeared on my studio table, and its patterns seemed to answer those already on the canvas. Within a day, the work was complete.The Wait Series (Agra) remains one of my most cherished works. It holds a memory of my parents without needing to illustrate the journey literally. A sister work belongs to the same two-piece series. Medium: Mixed media on canvas Size: 18 x 24 inches Part of a two-piece series — a sister work also available One-of-a-kind original artwork Includes a certificate of authenticity Ships carefully packaged and insured An original artwork by Satish Prabhu, created through his own studio practice. An artist-made work, not an AI-generated image. $2,000.00
The Saltimbanques Reconstructed Original (Sold)
The Saltimbanques Reconstructed Original (Sold) Dimensions: 48 × 60Location: SoldSold — Private collection. Not available for purchase.A tall red hat, a lowered gaze, a face held between warm yellow and shadow. This mixed-media reconstruction draws on a character from the world of the saltimbanques, bringing the performer into a field of blue, patterned textures, and handwritten marks.The costume announces a public role; the expression leaves room for something quieter. Layers interrupt the portrait without dissolving it, letting the figure remain both a character and an unanswered question.Original artwork. Sold.Listed exhibition: Cafe Vigo, Oak Park. An original artwork by Satish Prabhu, created through his own studio practice. An artist-made work, not an AI-generated image. $2,100.00
The bathers series
The bathers series Dimensions: 34 x 48 inLocation: Oak Park studioIn Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar, I found vintage portraits of bathhouse scenes. Their weathered surfaces stayed with me alongside the hammam culture I encountered during my visit: older images meeting a tradition still very much alive.The Bathers grew from that conversation. Drawing on Ottoman miniatures and classical Turkish art, I reimagined the scenes through mixed media, using muted earth tones and softened edges to recall steam and marble interiors. Rather than reconstruct one historical moment, the painting brings earlier images and present-day observations onto the same surface.Part of my Istanbul series, it considers the bathhouse as both an intimate space and a gathering place.Original mixed-media painting on canvas · 34 x 48 in. An original artwork by Satish Prabhu, created through his own studio practice. An artist-made work, not an AI-generated image. $2,300.00
Egypt series
Egypt series Dimensions: 6 x 10 inLocation: Oak Park studioConceived at the Grand Egyptian Museum, Cairo. Painted in Lisbon.Two figures face each other. They might be a pharaoh and his queen, or simply two presences held in conversation. The painting began with a sketch before the reliefs of the Grand Egyptian Museum, where the intimacy of a line or gesture stayed with me as strongly as the grandeur.Painted later in Lisbon, Eternal Conversations carries that economy of expression into golden figures and a slate-blue ground. Bold black outlines give their meeting clarity without settling its meaning.What endures here is not a monument but an exchange: the turn of a head, a hand reaching, the attention one figure gives another.Original painting · Mixed media on canvas · Small format · Lisbon Art Studio · 2025By Satish PrabhuRead the full story behind this work →The Geometry of Time: Poetry, Papyrus, and Pyramids — Art Blog An original artwork by Satish Prabhu, created through his own studio practice. An artist-made work, not an AI-generated image. $200.00
Egypt series
Egypt series Dimensions: 10 x 12 inLocation: Oak Park studioConceived at the Grand Egyptian Museum, Cairo. Painted in Lisbon.Exhibition record: Vigo Cafe Gallery, Oak Park IL. Show opening June 13, 2026.What happens when a pharaoh walks into a bar?This painting began with a sketch at the Grand Egyptian Museum. Back in Lisbon, the ancient figures met a more contemporary geometry: shelves, bottles, a seated figure, and a standing pharaoh extending his hand. Different centuries found themselves sharing the same room.Grid lines structure the encounter, while blue holds its separate worlds together. The bottles suggest offerings; an everyday gesture takes on a ceremonial air. The Conversations is about the ancient remaining present, occasionally by pulling up a stool.Original painting · Mixed media on canvas · Small format · Lisbon Studio · 2025By Satish PrabhuRead the full story behind this work →The Geometry of Time: Poetry, Papyrus, and Pyramids — Art Blog An original artwork by Satish Prabhu, created through his own studio practice. An artist-made work, not an AI-generated image. $300.00
Egypt series
Egypt series Dimensions: 8 x 8 inLocation: Oak Park studioConceptualised standing in the Grand Egyptian Museum, Cairo. Painted in Lisbon.Exhibition record: Vigo Cafe Gallery, Oak Park IL. Show opening June 13, 2026.In the Grand Egyptian Museum, I kept returning to the stillness of the figures: simplified lines, composed postures, gestures that had lost none of their force. Back in Lisbon, those observations became the starting point for The Wait.The kneeling figure holds something unresolved: an offering, perhaps, or a question. Warm ochres and terracottas meet a cool blue ground, carrying the museum’s forms into a new setting. The posture belongs to an ancient visual language; the feeling needs no translation.Here, waiting is not an empty interval. It is the action of the painting, held in a figure that seems in no hurry to explain itself.Original painting · Mixed media on canvas · Lisbon Studio · 2025By Satish PrabhuRead the full story behind this work →The Geometry of Time: Poetry, Papyrus, and Pyramids — Art Blog An original artwork by Satish Prabhu, created through his own studio practice. An artist-made work, not an AI-generated image. $200.00
Springtime
Springtime Dimensions: 24x24 inLocation: Oak Park studioSpring arrives here in fragments: blue flower-like bursts, pale greens, lavender, and small red blossoms. Layers of pattern meet curling, railing-like lines, with acrylic and paper sharing the surface rather than settling into a single view.The Chicago Spring is an abstract mixed-media work that rewards a slower look. Geometric grids and soft washes sit beside more restless marks. Its sense of renewal comes through these encounters of color and texture, without needing to describe a particular street or garden.Medium: Mixed media, acrylic and paper. An original artwork by Satish Prabhu, created through his own studio practice. An artist-made work, not an AI-generated image. $1,200.00
The French collection
The French collection Dimensions: 36x36 inLocation: Oak Park studioA journey becomes a room of remembered shapes. Based on my travel photographs from Villefranche-sur-Mer, this original mixed-media painting brings shutters, window frames, a vase, and flowering curves into a composition of yellow, blue, violet, and warm orange.Rather than offer one uninterrupted view, the painting lets interior and exterior meet. A dark window grid holds one side; curling lines and scattered blossoms loosen the geometry elsewhere. The place remains recognizable in its details, while color gives it another life on canvas.Original mixed-media painting · 36x36 in. An original artwork by Satish Prabhu, created through his own studio practice. An artist-made work, not an AI-generated image. $3,000.00
Friends — 36x48 in — Vigo cafe
Friends — 36x48 in — Vigo cafe Two friends share a room, its flowers and patterns gathering around them like the familiar clutter of a life together. One leans into the space of the other. Their closeness is easy to recognize, though neither figure gives everything away.This large painting is about the trust that begins in adolescence and sometimes survives all our subsequent attempts to become different people. Childhood friends, siblings, the people who knew us before we had a convincing explanation of ourselves: these are the relationships I wanted to hold here.I borrowed the color and structure from Matisse, then reconstructed them around my own subject. What interests me is not simply two figures sitting together, but the quiet confidence of belonging beside someone. Friendship does not require us to become the same person. It asks us to make room.About the artistSatish Prabhu brings travel, reading, and everyday encounters into a practice of reconstruction. Figures, interiors, and familiar objects become ways to explore memory, belonging, and the distance between people. This is an original, artist-created work, not an AI-generated image.Dimensions: 36x48 inLocation: Vigo cafeRelated paintingsThe Beach House: another conversation with MatisseThe Memories and Time: care expressed through figures in relationFrom the journalA related reflection on trust and mutual support: The memories and time $3,000.00
The Windows series — 18x24 in — Oak Park studio
The Windows series — 18x24 in — Oak Park studio An open window does not always mean freedom. Yellow walls frame a landscape of blue and pale green; the shutters throw long shadows into the room. Beyond the opening is air and distance. Inside, even the quiet seems to be keeping a secret.I painted this while reading George Orwell’s 1984, thinking about Winston Smith and Julia, and the fragile private world they try to make within a society that refuses them one. The landscape recalls the novel’s imagined refuge of the Golden Country: open space as an alternative to scrutiny, a place where being together might briefly be enough.This is not a literal illustration of their meeting place. The window holds the tension instead. It offers a view out, while reminding us that an opening can also leave us exposed.About the artistSatish Prabhu brings travel, reading, and everyday encounters into a practice of reconstruction. Figures, interiors, and familiar objects become ways to explore memory, belonging, and the distance between people. This is an original, artist-created work, not an AI-generated image.Dimensions: 18x24 inLocation: Oak Park studioRelated paintingsAll the dreams in the world: another interior shaped by literatureThe Empty Chair: a room holding an absent presence $1,200.00
The colors of memory — 24 x 36 — Vigo cafe
The colors of memory — 24 x 36 — Vigo cafe A small chair waits in a room assembled from remembered things. Flowers, shutters, a fireplace, and fragments of pattern give the interior its bearings. Lavender and turquoise soften the geometry. Yellow has other plans.The painting began with a visit to a Midwestern estate sale and a Stickley chair. In such rooms, ordinary objects arrive with lives still attached to them, even when those lives are no longer there to explain themselves. I did not want to document the house so much as hold that unsettled feeling of entering someone else’s memories.Postcards and letters collected in Chicago’s markets helped shape the colors and textures. These fragments became part of the painting’s language, bringing small traces of other lives into a room that is both familiar and reconstructed. The chair remains furniture. It is also a place for the imagination to sit.About the artistSatish Prabhu brings travel, reading, and everyday encounters into a practice of reconstruction. Figures, interiors, and familiar objects become ways to explore memory, belonging, and the distance between people. This is an original, artist-created work, not an AI-generated image.Dimensions: 24 x 36Location: Vigo cafeRelated paintingsThe Empty Chair: another work rooted in an estate-sale encounterAll the dreams in the world: an interior built from accumulated memoriesFrom the journalOn collecting the papers that enter my paintings: Secret passageway in Paris for antique lovers $4,000.00
The window series — 6 x 10 in — Lisbon Studio
The window series — 6 x 10 in — Lisbon Studio A bright town rises beyond two figures in a dark interior. Pink, ochre, and blue give the architecture its rhythm, while black holds the room together. The view is not quite outside; the figures are not entirely separate from it.The architectural motifs come from churches in Estoril, Portugal. Here, abstract figuration meets the impulse of plein-air painting: the wish to carry a place seen in the world into the more private geography of a canvas.I return to the expressive black I admire in Matisse, not as an absence of color but as something that lets the brighter passages speak. The room and the town occupy the same surface. The window becomes their meeting place rather than a firm boundary between them.About the artistSatish Prabhu brings travel, reading, and everyday encounters into a practice of reconstruction. Figures, interiors, and familiar objects become ways to explore memory, belonging, and the distance between people. This is an original, artist-created work, not an AI-generated image.Dimensions: 6 x 10 inLocation: Lisbon StudioRelated paintingsAll the dreams in the world: another meeting of interior life and Portuguese surroundingsFrom the journalOn looking beyond the visitor’s view: Lisbon in JuneOn sketches, Lisbon, and the life beneath a painting: All the Dreams of the World $600.00
The window series — 24x24 in — Vigo cafe
The window series — 24x24 in — Vigo cafe The chair is empty, but the room is not without company. A figure appears beyond the railing; a vase, a window, and fragments of handwriting offer signs of ordinary life. Green, violet, and grey keep the spaces close without quite joining them.This painting holds the experience of caring from a distance: missing the people we love while continuing to inhabit another room, another city, another day. The empty chair is not only a symbol of loss. It is also a place kept in mind for someone who is not here.Moroccan references remain in the painting’s vocabulary, but the feeling travels beyond any one place. The window allows us to look toward another life without closing the distance. Some kinds of care are like that: present, persistent, and unable to reach across the room.About the artistSatish Prabhu brings travel, reading, and everyday encounters into a practice of reconstruction. Figures, interiors, and familiar objects become ways to explore memory, belonging, and the distance between people. This is an original, artist-created work, not an AI-generated image.Dimensions: 24x24 inLocation: Vigo cafeRelated paintingsThe Memories and Time: caregiving made visible through the Three GracesThe Empty Chair: another room shaped by absenceFrom the journalRead the personal story: The Art of Caring for Loved Ones from Afar $400.00
Introspection series — 8x12 in — Sold (Private Collection)
Introspection series — 8x12 in — Sold (Private Collection) The newspaper has become part of the man. It crosses his chest where we might expect a shirt, filling the figure with other people’s words. Around him, pink, pale green, and blue hold their own fragments of writing.Opinionated Man belongs to a series of small Introspection paintings I developed using live figure models in Oak Park, Illinois, working on mixed-media surfaces. Looking at the body became a way of asking what else goes into making a person: the things we read, repeat, absorb, and eventually mistake for entirely our own thoughts.The face remains unresolved, but the printed convictions have arrived fully formed. There is something gently uncomfortable in that imbalance. A portrait can tell us what someone looks like; here, the papers begin to suggest what they have been taking in.About the artistSatish Prabhu brings travel, reading, and everyday encounters into a practice of reconstruction. Figures, interiors, and familiar objects become ways to explore memory, belonging, and the distance between people. This is an original, artist-created work, not an AI-generated image.Dimensions: 8x12 inLocation: SoldSold — Private collection. Not available for purchase.Related paintingsThe Stranded one: another figure surrounded by writing and layered marksFrom the journalFor context on my mixed-media practice in Oak Park: Creative Connections $0.00
Introspection series — 36 x 48 in — Lisbon Studio
Introspection series — 36 x 48 in — Lisbon Studio The figure did not arrive on a smooth, obedient surface. I began with loose canvas, crumpling it and working with spray paint. Its folds and edges suggested a body; the figure emerged through what the material had already done.This larger Introspection painting returns to the earlier Opinionated Man, but the process changes the encounter. Yellow, pink, turquoise, and violet move across the torso, while the dark ground holds traces of the disturbed surface. The gaze is calmer than the restless color might suggest, leaving the character’s inner life open rather than fixing it into a single expression.Pessoa, writing as Ricardo Reis, offers a useful companion to this meeting of fragments and presence. The lines below are a way of sitting with the finished work, not a claim about what originally inspired it.Sê todo em cada coisa. Põe quanto ésNo mínimo que fazes.Be whole in each thing. Put all that you are into the smallest thing you do. (English rendering.)Fernando Pessoa, writing as Ricardo Reis, from Para ser grande, sê inteiro, 1933.About the artistSatish Prabhu brings travel, reading, and everyday encounters into a practice of reconstruction. Figures, interiors, and familiar objects become ways to explore memory, belonging, and the distance between people. This is an original, artist-created work, not an AI-generated image.Dimensions: 36 x 48 inLocation: Lisbon StudioRelated paintingsAll the dreams in the world: Pessoa, private life, and a layered canvasThe Stranded one: a related abstract figurative workFrom the journalFor another painting in conversation with Pessoa: All the Dreams of the World $3,000.00
Fall collection — 18 x 18 in — Oak Park studio
Fall collection — 18 x 18 in — Oak Park studio Chicago’s fall does not arrive quietly. Leaves change color, shapes accumulate on the ground, and the garden begins offering a different set of materials. I collected flowers and leaves, attending to the variety that becomes visible when the season starts letting go.Using a gel plate, I made printed papers and then transferred them to the main canvas. The work moves between those separate impressions and their larger arrangement: blue bursts, pale greens, lavender, warm peach, and dark curling lines that give the surface its rhythm.This is part of the Fall collection. Rather than reproduce one view of Chicago, the painting gathers pieces of the season into a new pattern. The leaves do not have to remain where I found them to keep something of their character.About the artistSatish Prabhu brings travel, reading, and everyday encounters into a practice of reconstruction. Figures, interiors, and familiar objects become ways to explore memory, belonging, and the distance between people. This is an original, artist-created work, not an AI-generated image.Dimensions: 18 x 18 inLocation: Oak Park studioRelated paintingsSpringtime: another season approached through pattern and layered fragmentsFrom the journalA related essay on flowers, memory, and making something from what cannot be kept: The Flowers That Kept Me Company $1,200.00
The Performance — 36 x 48 in — Lisbon Studio
The Performance — 36 x 48 in — Lisbon Studio The musicians play on one side; their listeners settle on the other. Red holds the performers, while blue and muted green gather around an audience of elegant postures, glasses, and tables. Everyone shares the room. They do not necessarily share the same evening.The Performance considers the musical chemistry, and the distance, between players and listeners on a wealthy cruise. The composition keeps both groups in view, allowing the music to be imagined in the space between them.The pleasure of listening is present, but so is the separation between the people providing it and those receiving it. Sound can cross a room with remarkable ease. The other distances are less cooperative.About the artistSatish Prabhu brings travel, reading, and everyday encounters into a practice of reconstruction. Figures, interiors, and familiar objects become ways to explore memory, belonging, and the distance between people. This is an original, artist-created work, not an AI-generated image.Dimensions: 36 x 48 inLocation: Lisbon StudioRelated paintingsThe Wait Series (Agra): another figurative work carrying a journey into the studioThe Conversations (Egypt): figures from different worlds sharing an interior $3,000.00
The bathers series — 36 x 48 in — Lisbon Studio
The bathers series — 36 x 48 in — Lisbon Studio Four figures move within a room of curtains, patterned flooring, and vivid green. Arms rise, bodies turn, and the railing at the front reminds us that we are looking into a space with a life of its own.The structure comes from traditional art encountered in Istanbul. I reconstructed it through the same artistic approach that informs The Cleaning Lady: beginning with an inherited image, then allowing my own colors, patterns, and arrangements to give it another life. The source remains part of the conversation without determining every gesture of the finished work.The bathers share an intimate space, but they are not interchangeable figures. Each keeps a separate posture within the room’s larger rhythm. The painting considers how private gestures can remain private even in company.About the artistSatish Prabhu brings travel, reading, and everyday encounters into a practice of reconstruction. Figures, interiors, and familiar objects become ways to explore memory, belonging, and the distance between people. This is an original, artist-created work, not an AI-generated image.Dimensions: 36 x 48 inLocation: Lisbon StudioRelated paintingsThe Cleaning Lady: a related reconstruction from an antique image, now in a private collectionThe Bathers: the companion Istanbul workFrom the journalRead about the hammam encounters behind the series: Saunas of IstanbulRead about the found-image practice behind The Cleaning Lady $2,400.00
Introspection series — 10 x 12 in — Oak Park studio
Introspection series — 10 x 12 in — Oak Park studio One model. Two viewpoints. A closeness that almost becomes a single body.The figures lean back into one another against lavender, pale yellow, and traces of print. One face is ochre, the other blue. Dark lines briefly separate them; the surrounding color keeps bringing them together.I used the same model from different perspectives to explore the feeling of knowing someone so well that separateness begins to loosen. The image holds a useful contradiction: one person appears as two, while the relationship suggests two people becoming one. What joins them is trust, the quiet certainty that something will hold even when you lean back without looking.About the artistSatish Prabhu brings travel, reading, and everyday encounters into a practice of reconstruction. Figures, interiors, and familiar objects become ways to explore memory, belonging, and the distance between people. This is an original, artist-created work, not an AI-generated image.Dimensions: 10 x 12 inLocation: Oak Park studioRelated paintingsThe Memories and Time: another painting about holding and being heldThe Stranded one: another encounter within abstract figurationFrom the journalOn trust expressed through bodies in relation: The memories and time $200.00
Fall collection — 18 x 18 in — Sold (Private Collection)
Fall collection — 18 x 18 in — Sold (Private Collection) The season lets go. The painting keeps a few things.Green leaves reach across blue while yellow, orange, and red gather in patterned fragments. Small flowers and curling lines run along the lower edge. It is not one uninterrupted garden, but a gathering of the things that make us stop in one.Part of the Fall collection, this work follows the same attention to Chicago’s changing leaves and collected flowers as its companion painting. Printed papers, developed through the gel-plate process and brought onto the canvas, let the season change its arrangement. Leaf meets geometry; a little blossom interrupts a broad field of color. What disappears outside is allowed another kind of life here.About the artistSatish Prabhu brings travel, reading, and everyday encounters into a practice of reconstruction. Figures, interiors, and familiar objects become ways to explore memory, belonging, and the distance between people. This is an original, artist-created work, not an AI-generated image.Dimensions: 18 x 18 inLocation: SoldSold — Private collection. Not available for purchase.Related paintingsSpringtime: another season gathered through pattern and fragmentsFrom the journalOn keeping something of a season’s company: The Flowers That Kept Me Company $0.00
The French collection — 24x24 in — Oak Park studio
The French collection — 24x24 in — Oak Park studio Montmartre, Colmar, Morocco. A glass borrowed from Matisse. No one has checked their passports.A bottle and wine glass sit before a city assembled in ochre, blue, and pink. Montmartre’s streets meet images of Colmar; a Moroccan grille finds its place among French windows and arches. The familiar geography has become a little less obedient.I reconstructed these encounters rather than keeping them in separate travel albums. The glass brings Matisse to the table, while the grille carries another journey into the room. What holds the painting together is not one location but the way looking works: places lodge in us, then turn up beside one another when we begin to make something.About the artistSatish Prabhu brings travel, reading, and everyday encounters into a practice of reconstruction. Figures, interiors, and familiar objects become ways to explore memory, belonging, and the distance between people. This is an original, artist-created work, not an AI-generated image.Dimensions: 24x24 inLocation: Oak Park studioRelated paintingsThe French collection: another French journey reconstructed on canvasMorocco 2: another rearrangement of places and paintersFrom the journalVisit one of the places carried into this composition: 24 Hours in Unforgettable Colmar, FranceOn the papers and unexpected encounters I bring home from Paris $1,200.00
The Bathers Series — 36 x 48 in — Oak Park studio
The Bathers Series — 36 x 48 in — Oak Park studio They came from different paintings. Here, they share the afternoon.A standing figure anchors a gathering of seated and reclining bodies beneath long, curving stems. Blue figures stretch across the foreground; purple hills and turquoise sky leave room beyond them. The composition holds together without asking everyone to strike the same pose.After studying Cézanne’s life, biographies, and paintings, I brought characters from his works into this reconstructed collage. Oil pastels became part of the exchange, helping separate encounters find a shared setting. It is a conversation with an artist’s world, but not an attempt to leave that world untouched. The borrowed figures have new neighbors now, and a different arrangement of attention.About the artistSatish Prabhu brings travel, reading, and everyday encounters into a practice of reconstruction. Figures, interiors, and familiar objects become ways to explore memory, belonging, and the distance between people. This is an original, artist-created work, not an AI-generated image.Dimensions: 36 x 48 inLocation: Oak Park studioRelated paintingsThe Bathers: another reconstruction of figures in a shared spaceThe Beach House: another work made through a conversation with an earlier painter $3,600.00
Butterfly — 24x24 in — Oak Park studio
Butterfly — 24x24 in — Oak Park studio She meets your eye. The patterns take their time.A direct gaze holds the portrait while violet moves through the hair, honeycomb-like marks cross the face, and writing settles into one cheek. Turquoise clothing gives the eye another field to explore. Against green and gold, the figure remains unmistakably present.Butterfly brings portrait and pattern close enough that neither can be treated as background. The face has its own expression; its fragments add other rhythms without explaining it away. Look quickly and you meet a person. Stay a little longer and the image begins offering smaller encounters, a line of text, a change of texture, a shape repeated where you did not first notice it.About the artistSatish Prabhu brings travel, reading, and everyday encounters into a practice of reconstruction. Figures, interiors, and familiar objects become ways to explore memory, belonging, and the distance between people. This is an original, artist-created work, not an AI-generated image.Dimensions: 24x24 inLocation: Oak Park studioRelated paintingsRed Head 1: another portrait where pattern interrupts a familiar faceThe Red Head 2: a related portrait, now in a private collection $600.00
Introspection series — 12x 36 — Oak Park studio
Introspection series — 12x 36 — Oak Park studio The room is full of color. What she is waiting for remains outside it.A woman turns toward an opening, one hand meeting a violet field of pattern. Blue fabric, a green skirt, and a red shutter hold her against the architecture. Her face offers little explanation. The posture does the speaking.The painting keeps attention on the interval rather than its resolution: the room someone occupies while their thoughts have already gone elsewhere. Waiting changes a space without moving its furniture. A window becomes a direction, a hand becomes a question, and an ordinary pause begins to carry the weight of a story we have not been told.About the artistSatish Prabhu brings travel, reading, and everyday encounters into a practice of reconstruction. Figures, interiors, and familiar objects become ways to explore memory, belonging, and the distance between people. This is an original, artist-created work, not an AI-generated image.Dimensions: 24x 36Location: Oak Park studioRelated paintingsThe Empty Chair: another interior shaped by what is not thereThe Memories and Time: another painting about staying presentFrom the journalA related reflection on presence across a distance: The Art of Caring for Loved Ones from Afar $800.00
A Window Series — 24 x 36 — Oak Park studio
A Window Series — 24 x 36 — Oak Park studio The town is outside. Until the painting lets it in.Two figures share a dark interior while a pointed roof, stepped façades, and patches of pink and blue rise beyond them. A table enters from the right; writing crosses the surface. The room offers a place to stand, but the view refuses to remain neatly framed.Within the Window series, architecture becomes a way of bringing an external world into an internal one. The figures and the town occupy the same painted field, their proportions rearranged by color and attention. Looking out becomes another way of looking inward. The window does not settle the distance; it gives the distance a shape.About the artistSatish Prabhu brings travel, reading, and everyday encounters into a practice of reconstruction. Figures, interiors, and familiar objects become ways to explore memory, belonging, and the distance between people. This is an original, artist-created work, not an AI-generated image.Dimensions: 24 x 36Location: Oak Park studioRelated paintingsAll the dreams in the world: another window between a room and an inner lifeThe French collection: another place reconstructed from remembered detailsFrom the journalFrom the travel journal: 24 Hours in Unforgettable Colmar, France $1,800.00
The Window series
The Window series A house inside a window. A window into what a house can hold.The small ochre building stands within a larger arch of yellow light. Deep blue and black gather around it, crossed by white marks and the geometry of a railing. Familiar enough to recognize, the house has become strange enough to look at again.I reconstructed a Midwestern house rather than painting it as a straightforward view. Held inside the arch, it becomes both a place and an image of a place: something we might enter, remember, or carry into another room. The surrounding darkness does not explain what happened there. It leaves the lit shape to hold our attention, and lets the idea of home remain a little unfinished.About the artistSatish Prabhu brings travel, reading, and everyday encounters into a practice of reconstruction. Figures, interiors, and familiar objects become ways to explore memory, belonging, and the distance between people. This is an original, artist-created work, not an AI-generated image.Dimensions: 36 × 48Location: Oak Park studioRelated paintingsThe Empty Chair: another Midwestern interior carrying traces of a lifeThe Beach House: another house transformed through reconstruction $600.00