BENGALURU: Being confined indoors has come as a boon for artist Gurudas Shenoy who has been utilising his time to execute a series of paintings inspired by a pool of thoughts. “There are so many ideas, but there’s so much confusion. I am in an unfamiliar territory, a zone which I can’t step out of. My works reflect this state of mind,” says Shenoy, who has completed 12 paintings since April and plans to showcase them in an online exhibition alongside various artists in the coming months.
Taking us through the process of his paintings which comprises mixed elements – oil pastels, oil paints, acrylic medium and charcoal sketches – the city-based painter says each element has been blended in with care to obtain a desired result. “Acrylics lend brightness and have a bit of plasticity, but oils control it, bringing in transparency. To get layer by layer abstraction and textures, these are feelings what I want to create,” says Shenoy, adding that with a free hand arising from the ongoing pandemic, he has ventured into this project in a manner which is significantly different from his previous works, since he earlier mostly worked with a single medium.
Talking about the title of each piece, Shenoy points out that they are all self-explanatory, such as Borders not Boundaries, Unfamiliar Territory, Light from Within, etc. Ask him how many more pieces he plans to create, and he says, “I haven’t decided when to stop, there are developments every day. As an artist, I take my time to explore, so I can’t set a deadline for the same.”
Having stepped out of his comfort zone, Shenoy states that at this point in time artists aren’t bound by a deadline. He adds, “There’s a lot of time on hand to introspect at this point. This a time to experiment, and more importantly for artists to do something they haven’t so far. Each one reacts to a situation in a different way. The unfamiliar territory which has arisen through the recent turn of events has affected all of us. These paintings are a reaction to my thoughts.”