Hari Prasad Sharma lives in the past. He can imagine in minute detail what community life in a Patan baha might have been like 400 years ago (right), or enter into Jaya Prakash Malla's dreams of Taleju Bhawani. And he can put this imagination with extraordinary skill into breathtaking three-dimensional paintings.

Sharma, in his extensive research and meditation on Kathmandu Valley's lives and times, seems to have absorbed something of the quality that has made it what it is-a combination of deep knowledge of history and tradition and technical expertise, and the vision to innovate, based on these two. All the works in Sharma's current show, Kathmandu Valley: Down the Ages, are oils, and while they are loosely 'realist', there is a slightly off-kilter perspective, colours either muted or exaggerated with an almost crayon-like boldness, corners, hills and clouds sometimes deliberately cartoonish that force the Viewer to meditate on the plasticity of the work. It is this lack of pretence to authenticity that gives Sharma's scenes their immediacy and emotional resonance. They are more "real" because they are so highly individual.

This show is an important step for the 65-year-old Lagan Tole native whose career has been marked by a nuanced understanding of tradition and its place in contemporary life.