Shamsuddin is capable of taking any subject and converting it into his personal idiom, through his tremendous ability of capturing the essence of human body and details of objects around us. Trained as a miniature painter in the Department of Fine Art at National College of Arts, Shamsuddin demonstrates how the concept of skill is not limited or confined. It is neither bound to history, nor chained to a region, and certainly not clamped by a particular tradition. Shamsuddin exercises artist’
s freedom and enjoys the freedom of his subjects as well. Figures with their origin in European classical painting emerge in his new miniature, several without the convention of clothes or presented in prescribed roles/duties. Images of
Madonna, muscular men, cherubs, and nude women are painted along with faces and figures from traditional Indian miniature painting. In his work, a viewer encounters the profile of a Mughal Emperor, portrait of an Indian princess, presence of a maiden from Pahari School of painting, next to unmistakable features of Rembrandt, reminding of his famous Self-Portrait.