For years Shashi Shah has painted horses and Basta Gopal Vaidya, temples. This week, a significant body of work of both artists is on view at the Siddhartha Art Gallery.

It is a felicitous combination, because Shah and Vaidya are two of Nepal's best artists and unusual for their devotion to teasing out the diverse possibilities of a single theme.

In Shah's paintings there are terrified horses. Running horses. Galloping horses. Baying horses. Leaping horses. Even flying horses. All of them are afraid, maybe, of the impending danger. Shah says he sees the horse, the incarnation Vishnu takes on to protect humanity from dangers, as a fitting sign of the times. Even the horses at rest in his paintings have an ear cocked, as if to catch the faintest whisper of discontent.

Shah's horses often seem to be in chaotic situations, yet the colours tell us that the paintings are really about the equine power to preserve and reassure. The soothing calm of blues and greens, livened up in one instance by Shah's kinetic red, at others by a life-affirming yellow, all tell us before Shah's statement does, that, "no matter what crisis we face and whatever the dangers may be, the world is surviving up to now." What is important is to acknowledge that trouble exists, and that the universe eventually finds a way out of it.

Unlike in his earlier work, Shah does not play with the thick impasto he was partial to, which created sculpture-like relief in his work. This time around, he concentrates on refining the illusion of distance and depth created by contrasting colours and tonal gradations. The horses retain their characteristic ruggedness through the use of paper and glue. His fleeing horses have an ironic and reassuring air of strength. This solidity echoes in Shah's deceptively simple-looking sculptures of papier mache and iron strings.

Batsa Gopal Vaidya's paintings provide a vivid contrast to Shah's work. There are fields of simmering colours-red orange, yellow, green, pink-that the eye loses itself in, only to discover slow brushstrokes that delineate landscapes, and intricately -designed temples. Vaidya's work does not overtly play with texture, instead, there is a subtle layering of images on a flat surface, much like in thankas. The influence of this traditional painting is also evident in the way Vaidya uses two converging lines to create impressions of mountains and hills.

The depth in his paintings comes from the division of the picture plane into different segments by rectangular swathes of colour-not, always entirely successful. Some of the paintings look flat, and the impressionistic, mysterious air that Vaidya seems to be aiming at looks simply overdone in these works.

But regardless of these shortcomings, the preoccupation of the show comes through-a sense of Nepal's heritage, mountains, rivers, forests and, yes, temples.

Putting these two artists together was a good idea, and not just because both are diminutive, reserved alumni of the JJ School of Arts in Mumbai. It is always interesting to see the directions taken by artists like Shah and Vaidya, two of Nepal's best who lavish all their attention on one theme or object.