This article is more than 2 years old.

August 19, 2016 This article is more than 2 years old.

For K R Santhana Krishnan, doors are more than just something to pass through.

The 38-year-old artist from the town of Kumbakonam in Tamil Nadu has painted over 800 doors in the past 18 years, taking inspiration from the locality’s old, colourful ancestral homes, including his own grandparents’ house that boasted of 82 beautiful doors.

For Krishnan, the paintings are a way to bring back memories of simpler times in India, before modernization hastened the adoption of glass, steel, and concrete.

“Most of my paintings are (from) my childhood memories; nowadays (these doors) are vanishing,” Krishnan said, his goal being to recreate those images for people who view his art in galleries.

The colorful works also feature the trappings of another time in the form of vessels made of brass and copper, aluminium milk cans, and even bicycles, which Krishnan says were once owned by every household.

“Now you have a cycle (and) you take a selfie with (it), it’s like a fashion,” he said.

Here are some of Krishnan’s paintings.

KR Santhanakrishnan

KR Santhanakrishnan

KR Santhanakrishnan

KR Santhanakrishnan

KR Santhanakrishnan

KR Santhanakrishnan

KR Santhanakrishnan

KR Santhanakrishnan

KR Santhanakrishnan

KR Santhanakrishnan

KR Santhanakrishnan

Krishnan’s paintings are on display at the Kynkyny Art gallery in Bengaluru until Aug. 31.