Vilas Shinde was born in Satara, Maharashtra in 1953. He completed his Diploma in Drawing and Painting from the Sir J.J. School of Art, Mumbai in 1978 followed by a Post Diploma in Painting from the M.S. University, Baroda in 1980. He then studied painting at the Ecole Nationale Superieure Des Beaux – Arts and Print Making in Paris, France, under S.W. Hayter.

Arriving at painting from printmaking, Vilas Shinde has nuanced the colour wheel. To paint and place colours aside from each other is a complex mechanism that requires observation and studied application of paint. Shinde has a practice that is action-based where the placement of a certain pigment breaks the schema of painting allowing an aesthetic displacement. Through his works, he attempts to express his rapturous absorption of nature. The images, delineated with minimal objective details, acquire expressionistic dimensions because of the tonal variations of the surrounding space. Arabesque of beautiful textural details, in finely graded shades of emotive colour, fill the space in and around his images.

In Impulsions, which is Shinde’s recent body of works, we encounters the impulsion of colour theory through astounding experimentation of multiple hues.

Vilas Shinde has won a number of awards – first prize at the 17th Maharashtra State Art Exhibition in 1976 and the Gujarat State Lalit Kala Academy Exhibition, Ahmedabad in 1980.