Fancy making a self-portrait facial imprint foisted on a skewer. Reminiscent somewhat of the clay figurines of mythical characters and more modern superheroes hawked by itinerant dough-makers in Penang in the 1960s and 1970s. Redza Piyadasa could have done this when studying at the Specialists Teachers Training Institute in Cheras, Kuala Lumpur, in the 1960s, or maybe 1970s. It is an early educational institution where teacher trainees are taught various disciplines, including art and craft and music. Here, Piyadasa presents himself raw and willing, but the physiognomy façade does not prepare anyone, even Piyadasa himself, to his future developments as artist-sculptor-printmaker, also writer-historian and polemicist. It is uncertain how many copies of the mould is cast (it's not in edition) but it does capture the aspirations of one on the threshold of destiny. Piyadasa had also done a face profile of Latiff Mohidin (1978), similarly foisted. As an artist, Redza Piyadasa was unorthodox; as a writer-historian, controversial. He first excelled when he jointly won the Major Prize in the Malaysian Landscape competition in 1974 with Lee Kian Seng. On the international scene, he won the Prince Claus Award (1998), Australian Cultural Award (1987) and the Japan Foundation Travel Award (1992). He was also artist-in-residence at Canberra Institute of the Arts in 1991. He was also a co-founder of the Five Arts Centre. In 2001, the National Art Gallery KL accorded him a retrospective. Piyadasa's tutelage was at the Universitiy of Hawaii (MFA), Hornsey College of Arts; Malayan Teachers College, Brinsford Lodge, Wolverhampton, Britain; and the Specialist Teachers Training College, Kuala Lumpur.