Dreams, sometimes, do come true. Inspired at an age as early as six by a neighbor - a versatile artist and craftsman, Sri Suhas Chandra Bose - at Srirampore, and thereafter guided at Chandannagore by Sri Sunil Kumar Chatterjee, then a student of Indian Art College, Kolkata, Rama Prasad (b. Nov 12, 1948 at Chunchura in Hooghly district of West Bengal) wanted to be an artist since his childhood. He was fortunate to have the support of his parents in fulfilment of his dream, as painting as a profession was generally not favored at that time among middle class families.
            Son of a Government servant with a transferable job, he had to move from one small town to another which caused disruption in his schooling but provided him an opportunity of growing up among the simple country folks and the beauty and vastness of unadulterated nature of semi-urban and rural Bengal. These experiences created a lasting impression in his mind which would, in future, shape his destiny as an artist and manifest in his paintings.
            In response to a competition for drawing a poster for an anti-hoarding campaign organized by the Government of West Bengal his drawing titled 'Hoarding is a Crime' won the first prize, when he was only 10 years old.
            Armed with the initial coaching of his childhood mentor, Sri Chatterjee of Chandannagore, he was selected for studying 'Indian Painting and Murals' in the Government College of Art and Craft, one of the premier institutions of its type in the country.
            Over the period spanning almost forty years he, besides presenting his works in three solo exhibitions, participated in a number of workshops and exhibitions arranged by different organisations, notable among which were Kolkata Kala Mela organised by Lalit Kala Academy, State Charukala Utsav, exhibiton at New York City Art Centre and exhibition in Museum Gallery, Mumbai.
            Though he started initially as a water colour painter, he experimented with different media—tempera, acrylic, pastel, gouache, and mixed media—over the years to gain control over the medium and suit his moods of paintings.
            He is deeply attracted by the simplicity of design, form, and content of folk art worldwide. This attraction coupled with Indian, oriental and occidental art, music and literature has been synthesised in his mental world and expressed as an independent art form. The simplicity, innocence, and dreaminess of childhood, the beauty of rural Bengal, and the unsophisticated and mundane lives of village folks have played an important role in his quest for self expression.
            The fusion of dream and reality and breaking of forms to depict an absolute simplicity through minimal distortion is the object of his present experimentation.