Watercolors created during the spring of 2003.

During 1952 or 1953 Mohan Samant went with two or three other painters to the Ajanta caves and spent a few days copying the wall paintings in these caves. This experience has remained with him and continues to influence his work.
Because of this experience he has been attracted to a group of watercolors in the Egyptian section of the Metropolitan Museum. These paintings were created by members of the Museum's expedition during the 1920's. They are exact copies of the paintings on the walls of the tombs and "... makes looking at the facsimile an experience almost equal to seeing the original" according to a description on the website of the museum.
Samant says: "In my painting I have swallowed the entire history of thousands of years and synchronized it into a modern idiom. Nobody can tell me I am a copyist because I am just as modern as anyone else except that my influences do not come from the contemporary art world, they come from the entire panorama of art history. "

See below for an example of a Museum painting.