GS Shenoy was a quiet, self-effacing force of Nature. It is only when he painted that you saw the swirling galaxies within, the many worlds within worlds.
Interlocked pieces of thoughts.
Thoughts with edges and texture and imprints of fading memories.
Thoughts that are like scrunched up papers.
Like rocks that want to melt.
Like marble shards.
Like Origami shapes.
Like autumn leaves.
Pieces of clouds.
Aged slate.
Fragmented canvas.
Pyramids of impulses.
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And the brush that squiggles, drags itself across a sea of colour, piles shadows with light, bleeds, stays still, is an impressionist and an expressionist and abstraction and free verse in just one square inch.
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GS Shenoy’s paintings exemplified the miracle of what happens when you follow a single thread of inspiration into the wilderness fearlessly and allow it to take charge of a canvas and let it do what it pleases. What emerges is an elemental explosion that flows like lava and yet is contained, shaped and moulded by restraint into shapes that are unrepeatable almost as if they belonged to Nature. As if they were real things born of the earth and the sky and water and fire.
Who is to say they aren’t?
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On his 75th birth anniversary, his son and well-known artist Gurudas Shenoy launched a book on his life and work, Shenoy-Footprints at Bangalore’s Venkatappa Art Gallery. The show of his works will be on till April 4. A website (http://gsshenoy.com/) was also launched to introduce his work to a new generation of art lovers. The legacy of GS Shenoy lives on.
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Reema Moudgil has been writing for magazines and newspapers on art, cinema, issues, architecture and more since 1994, is an RJ, hosts a daily Ghazal show, runs unboxed writers, is the editor of Chicken Soup for The Indian Woman’s soul, the author of Perfect Eight (http://www.flipkart.com/perfect-eight-9380032870/p/itmdf87fpkhszfkb?pid=9789380032870&_l=A0vO9n9FWsBsMJKAKw47rw–&_r=dyRavyz2qKxOF7Yuc ) and an artist.