Born in the town of Shimoga in Karnataka, BO Shailesh works with the multifaceted and composite feelings and emotions that human beings experience and express. As he admits, many of these explorations deal with the experiences of his youth, and the searching nature of a young man who finds everything in his environment interesting or noteworthy. The curiosity of a young and bright mind is one of the ideas this artist explores the most in his work. Abstracted human forms reach out with their hands to touch and feel what lies around them and to find someone to share their youthful passion and excitement with. Thin and elongated bodies seem to notice nothing around them, engrossed as deeply as they can be in what seems an eternal search for new connections and mates.
This leads to another subject that Shailesh deals with in his paintings - God; or rather the relationship between the individual and God, which, according to the artist, is one of constant searching to find the God that lives within each of us. Shailesh has painted a whole series of canvases called the "God in Me." The relationship that men and women share also figures in the work of this young abstractionist.
Shailesh does not seem to have found a medium or surface to make his own as yet, which is not surprising because he has only been painting and exhibiting his work since 1994, when he graduated with a BFA from the Karnataka University. He has painted on paper, glass and canvas using all sorts of varied media, including most recently even foil and paper thread. Some of his paintings are made up of four distinct pieces of canvas and some of two. Shailesh believes this is a way of 'doing his own thing' rather than following traditions and also finds it easier to operate on smaller surfaces. Because the centre is the focus of most paintings, Shailesh points out that the focus of these pieces is the moving away of the elements rather than their coming together at the central point.
After working for a period at the Lalit Kala Academy, BO Shailesh now has his own studio at the Cholamandal artists' village in Chennai.