Phantasmagoria: Journeying Through an Emotional Inner Landscape

Phantasmagoria: 

Journeying Through an Emotional Inner Landscape

A graduate of the Goa College of Arts (1999–2000), senior Goan artist Vasudev Shetye has spent decades shaping a distinctive voice in the contemporary Indian art space. His paintings are more than visual compositions—each canvas becomes a layered narrative where colour, memory, experience, and cultural history meet. Shetye creates from a place of intuitive sensitivity: he sits before his canvas, colours in hand, and allows his mind to wander freely, unburdened by the need to control, refine, or intellectualise. He often describes his approach as a return to childlike curiosity—a state where openness and innocence guide the artistic journey.

In this space of spontaneity, he searches for nature’s infinite shades, each carrying a whispered story. His longing is to capture purity, to feel the pulse of history, to drift into the boundless sky and dive into the deep blue sea. Shetye seeks to paint the emotional landscapes of people with the same gentleness with which the breeze brushes past trees. This free-flowing, playful spirit informs his art more than deliberate thought ever can.

Across his body of work, Shetye attempts to paint a world that extends beyond the physical one—a space where the inner and outer realms intertwine. God-made nature and man-made structures, two forces that shape human existence, have left deep impressions on him. Their contrasts, their harmonies, and their silent dialogues become visible through his paintings. Layered compositions blur foreground with background, history with memory, and the tangible with the dreamlike, much like Goa’s own overlapping stories. His use of mixed media—textures, fabrics, metals, and found objects—adds physical depth and symbolic nuance, creating canvases that feel alive and multidimensional.

At his upcoming solo exhibition at Carpe Diem Art Gallery, Vasudev Shetye presents a new body of work that delves deep into mood, memory, and the shifting terrains of imagination. “In this exhibition,” he shares, “I have tried to capture the mood. I have tried to go into history.” The collection unfolds like a dream—an ever-changing sequence of real and imagined scenes that blur into one another without warning. These works explore psychological and emotional landscapes where imagination roams freely, unrestrained by logic or chronology.

The exhibition immerses viewers in Goan life: the salty air heavy with feeling, the play of warm sunsets over the Arabian Sea, floating boats drifting across deep waters, and delicately adorned monuments watched over by angels symbolising purity and innocence. Colours flow like tides, shifting with spontaneity, mirroring both the sea’s temperament and the artist’s improvisational process.

Shetye ties together all these elements—history, emotion, landscape, and spirit—into a cohesive visual journey. His paintings invite viewers into a surreal yet familiar world where memory, myth, and lived experience effortlessly coexist. This exhibition celebrates not only his mastery of form and material but also his deep-rooted connection to Goa’s cultural and natural identity.

Phantasmagoria: Journeying Through an Emotional Inner Landscape opens on Sunday 14th December and will continue until 4th January from Wednesday – Sunday | 10 am – 7 pm