Asif Shaikh is an abstractionist but his work has a discreet reference of the world that he was brought up in. Unlike the cerebral and impassive stance of most of the abstract painters, Asif endures an emotive charge that consequently gets transferred to his painting. It’s not the nostalgia but the visual impressions, memories that shape his idiom. His drawings betray his inspirations from the rustic, earthy life from rural Maharashtra. Like Piet Mondrian, he too distills the recognizable, representative images into basic elements. His ethereal parole is born out of the ephemeral impressions of the wavering and splitting sunrays on water, the cattle walking on the dusty roads and the hovering twilight. His painting almost engulfs the viewer in its warmth.