There are paintings that announce themselves with certainty, and there are paintings that seem to arrive slowly- through hesitation, memory, observation and the quiet turbulence of thought. For an artist, the journey from an idea to an image is rarely linear. A thought enters the mind, gathers memories, encounters emotions and, somewhere along the way, becomes colour, line and form. It is this subtle movement between thought and expression that unfolds in the works of Deeprose Gurung, currently on view at Shashi Art Gallery, Balaju.
Deeprose’s paintings inhabit a world where figures, colours and symbols appear to be in an intimate conversation. The title of his exhibition is ‘Samaya Yatra’, which means the ‘Journey of Time’. His compositions are populated predominantly by women, accompanied by parrots and moons, while an unmistakable red repeatedly claims the surface. Yet beneath these recurring elements lies something more personal: an exploration of relationships, memories and the feminine presence that has shaped the artist’s understanding of the world.
“I am surrounded by women in such a way that I cannot separate myself from the feminine energy,” Deeprose reflects. “Be it a mother, sister or a friend.” For him, women are not simply subjects to be painted; they are part of an emotional landscape formed through years of closeness and observation. He is particularly interested in the moment when a woman feels comfortable enough to release what she carries within.
“When they get free and are in sharing mode, they can convey all of their feelings in a single go when they feel comfortable,” he says.
It is perhaps this idea of openness and confinement that gives his female figures their particular tension. Deeprose symbolically associates them with parrots- creatures known for their ability to speak, imitate and communicate. The metaphor, however, is not without contradiction. The more beautiful the bird, the more vulnerable it can become to captivity. Beauty and freedom, therefore, seem to exist uneasily beside one another.
“I find a lot of similarities among parrots and women,” the artist explains. “They both can talk and, when they trust you, they can share all their feelings in a very positive way.”
The parrot consequently becomes more than a decorative presence within his compositions. It becomes a symbolic companion to the female figure- an image of voice, trust, communication and, perhaps, entrapment. Around these figures, the moon frequently appears, introducing another layer of mystery. The moon’s quiet presence contrasts with the intensity of the red that dominates many of the paintings, creating a visual world that feels at once intimate and dreamlike.
Red is perhaps the most immediate visual sensation in Deeprose’s paintings. It appears across figures and spaces, sometimes as an emotional pulse and sometimes as an element that binds different parts of the composition together. His use of color is not merely ornamental; it contributes to the psychological atmosphere of the paintings. Against the red, his figures acquire a heightened presence, as though they have emerged from the artist’s inner world rather than simply been observed from the outside.
At the center of this world are women.
Their faces and bodies are constructed through Deeprose’s distinctive handling of line. The simplicity of the lines does not necessarily imply simplicity of thought. Instead, the lines retain traces of hesitation, movement and discovery. Samjhana Rajbhandari, mentor and director of Shashi Art Studio, sees this quality as one of the artist’s strengths.
“The works of Deeprose are really profound, and the way he uses lines in his figures marks him as a distinct emerging artist of Nepal,” she observes. According to Rajbhandari, his time within the studio environment has been an important part of his artistic development. “He has learnt a lot during his stay with the studio space, and I expect him to grow even further in the coming days as well.”
The studio itself forms an important chapter in Deeprose’s artistic journey. Established in 2010, Shashi Art Studio gradually evolved into a shared studio space for emerging artists around 2017. It offered not merely a physical place to work but an environment in which young artists could experiment, exchange ideas and receive mentorship. Deeprose developed much of his creative practice within this space, allowing the rhythm of studio life to become part of his artistic growth.
His current exhibition can therefore be viewed not only as a presentation of finished paintings but also as a glimpse into a continuing process of becoming.
That process is particularly visible in the artist’s recurring engagement with memory. Amid the female figures, parrots and moons are objects that belong to a much earlier world: paper planes and paper boats. These apparently simple childhood forms carry the weight of nostalgia. They recall a time when imagination required little more than a sheet of paper and the willingness to fold it into another possibility.
The paper plane carries the impulse to fly; the paper boat carries the desire to travel. In Deeprose’s paintings, these childhood memories become fragments of an emotional vocabulary. They suggest a longing for the uncomplicated imagination of childhood while simultaneously connecting that past to the person the artist has become.
One of the paintings introduces a masculine nude figure, creating a noticeable shift within the predominantly feminine visual universe. The figure brings the artist’s own presence closer to the surface. Beside it, the palette used to create the painting remains visible, almost like a quiet record of the act of painting itself. The palette is no longer merely a tool hidden behind the finished work; it becomes part of the artwork’s narrative, reminding the viewer that these images are constructed through an ongoing dialogue between hand, color and thought.
This openness towards the process is central to Deeprose’s practice. His paintings do not appear to seek a single, fixed interpretation. Instead, they invite the viewer to move between symbols-woman, parrot, moon, paper plane, paper boat-and to consider the emotional connections between them.
At another level, the women in these paintings are also an acknowledgement. Deeprose speaks of the women who have contributed to shaping him into the person and artist he is today. Their presence in his paintings consequently becomes both personal and symbolic. They are memories, relationships, influences and sources of emotional understanding translated into visual form.
The gallery thus becomes a space where private memories acquire a public language.
Deeprose’s creative mode is not loud. It does not depend on elaborate narratives or an excess of visual elements. Instead, it works through repetition, symbolism and the quiet accumulation of meaning. His women speak through silence; the parrots become their imagined voices; the moon watches from a distance; and the paper planes and boats carry memories of a childhood that continues to float through the artist’s present.
Perhaps that is where the subtlety of Deeprose’s paintings lies. They are not simply portraits of women or arrangements of recurring symbols. They are fragments of an inner conversation-between childhood and adulthood, freedom and confinement, memory and the present, the masculine and the feminine, and the artist and those who have shaped his emotional world.
At Shashi Art Gallery, these fragments come together as a visual diary of sorts: personal, symbolic and quietly searching. Deeprose is still finding his language, but in these works one can already sense the emergence of a distinctive vocabulary-one made of red, figures, parrots, moons and memories.
The exhibition is on view at Shashi Art Gallery, Balaju, from 15 August to 29 August, offering viewers an opportunity to enter this evolving world and witness an emerging artist negotiating the many possibilities between thought and canvas.
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