[3] Surendran Nair worked in a realistic style during the 1980s, creating both strong pen and ink drawings and also etchings and lithographs.
In the 1990s Nair worked more and more with oil on canvas, starting his long preoccupation with "corollary mythologies" that drew upon ancient allegories reinvented as modern day fables.
The imagery in these etchings has parallels with the works of the Italian artist Francesco Clemente, but actually is a direct outgrowth from Nair's "Corollary Mythologies".
[1] The artist has become known not only for his paintings, but also for his whimsical and preposterously long titles, such as "Tonight I am Coming to Visit You in Your Dream and None Will See and Question Me; Be Sure to Leave Your Door Unlocked, Cuckoonebulopolis, 2002".
[4] Nair became famed in India during 2000 for his painting "An Actor Rehearsing the Interior Monologue of Icarus" which depicts a naked man with strapped-on wings standing atop the Ashoka Column.