“If I try to articulate every little detail in a drawing, it would be like missing the forest for the trees, so it’s just about getting the outline of the forest.”-Jeff Koons
The title ‘Journeys Within’ itself says a lot about the show, letting one enter the inner realm of an artist, perceptible in the dance of colours and black lines- circumnavigating the labyrinth of sensations, seeking to express the unsaid – his experiences, understandings, approaches and exposures. Gurudas Shenoy’s canvases exhibited in the gallery Artisera, Bangalore, from 8th-30th March 2025, on his 60th birthday acme the dramatic textures and pulsating contrasts that charcoal provides, whether unaided as lines or overlapped with colours. The canvas’s grain adds a unique toothy appearance and highlights the tactile quality, the sense of immediacy and energy in the bold strokes, enhancing the artwork’s gravity and visual appeal. The way the charcoal interacts with the surface creates a captivating blend of texture and tone, making the drawing truly distinctive and stand out.
Each art piece feels like a lively snapshot of a moment in time, of structures and spaces, full of life and energy, with practised fluidity. The way the artist has woven together timeworn objects like tainted trunks, and natural elements, creates a sense of wistfulness and connection, making the painting feel exceptionally engaging. Still-life with antiques induces warmth and cosiness to the composition. Depth and character pour out of these art pieces featured in subdued yet rich colours and textured elements, such as wood or vintage items. The balance of light and shadow enhances the bucolic feel. Rustic colours, often inspired by earthy tones like greens, browns, and terracotta, create an inviting atmosphere with skies enthused from the West. Abstractions often combine geometric forms with communicative charcoal strokes, while landscapes might accentuate arrangements and cadences found in nature, such as squares, spirals or fractals. The blend of direct and simplified drawings with collages at a few places invites viewers to reimagine and appreciate a random, playful moment of creation.
From Canvas to Consciousness: Decoding Shenoy’s Narratives
In drawings, nature and windows often serve as complementary elements that enhance the aesthetic and demonstrative profundity of a piece. Windows not only mount nature but are like ‘frames in frames’, creating a visual connection, a poignant intersection and a seamless transition between the interior and exterior worlds. This juxtaposition countenances artists to reconnoitre themes of perspective, light, and the connection between human-made structures and the natural milieu; inanimate objects arranged to create visually appealing compositions. For example, a window might reflect or overlook a landscape, symbolizing the artist’s inner world or emotive state in reaction to nature’s exquisiteness and variations. This interplay can evoke feelings of awe, wonder, and introspection. In one triptych, nature peeping through windows not only evokes a connection to nature and feelings of serenity and peace, but also it appears like a ‘biophilic’ design with angular lines and grids of windows and trees, flowers, or a tiny bird perched on an edge of a boat, lamp, kettle, table and chair; natural light, foliage, leaves, or twigs. The representation of abstract assemblies in his painting comprises transforming rigid architectural forms into vibrant, non-representational artworks. Dr Asharfi Bhagat says, “Thematically, his landscapes are composite images of memories, perceptions, sight and sounds, and experiences in urban metropolis, rural scapes and heritage sites, which though appearing as déjà vu, are in fact his imaginative mindscapes of translated and transformed stories from epics, history and folk tales.”
Journeys Within: Gurudas Shenoy’s Meditative Odyssey Through Color and Form
In a few words one can say, that Gurudas’s instantaneous feelings and intentions are apparent in architectonic backdrops through his intangible forms and vivacious colours, gestural and sweeping brushwork creating nous of extemporaneity and flexibility, with an emphasis on light and atmosphere. The light shifts across a scene and transmutes ordinary landscapes into dreamlike, dynamic opuses, by incorporating stark contrast, adding subtle colour accents, and enhancing focus areas by leaving a lot of negative space on the canvas. This distinction between monochrome charcoal and colourful oils creates visually striking effects, where there is no loss of contrast or a murky appearance. Instead, he uniformly maintains distinct layers and textures.
The icing on the cake was the musical performance by Grammy-nominated Slide Guitarist Prakash Sontakke, accompanied by Adarsh Shenoy on Tabla and Krishna Kashyap on Violin; where their musical compositions of Raag jog, Kalyani ride in Kota, Charukeshi- the Himalayan spring time, jazz melodies and music of Malgudi days and old songs, seemed like a dialogue with the soul, melodies flowing through the colours, seeping into the forms, giving them a new rhythm, movement, and sentiment.
Image Courtesy of Dr Alka Chadha Harpalani
Alka is an artist and art writer with a diverse career spanning teaching, e-learning projects with the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), and editorial work. An alum of the Government College of Art, Chandigarh (BFA) and Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi (MFA, PhD), she has been recognised with numerous prestigious awards and honours.
