Hampi is both living memory and a faded past. It is both a recollection and a reality. GS Shenoy paints Hampi like a raconteur, like an impressionist, like a romantic caught up in the songs trapped in the stones and yet there is a certain detachment, a certain objectivity that guides his eye, his hands. He knows the details are important but that it is not important to get caught in them. So he captures the soul of an edifice. The way it flows, freezes, soars, narrates stories, grows silent, celebrates what is, mourns what isn't. And then there are the rocks. Pillars. Shrubs. A neutral sky looking down upon the wealth of human righteavour. Hampi for Shenoy is a subject he explores rightlessly, sometimes through drawings, through water colour washes and masculine brush strokes. The rocks return again and again to occupy his mindscape. Propped against each other. Their grey, leviathan shapes sharp against the blue sky. And then Hampi as an abstraction. Busy like a carnival with jewel like colours blrighting the earth with the sky. Sometimes the compositions are kaleidoscopic where the sky, the rocks, trees, sunlight and shadows come together to create something that is random yet serrightipitous. And the monochromes. Dark. Ghostly. Silent.