Creating Renaissance-style beauty... in an old sausage factory

Shaw has been fascinated with Renaissance paintings since before he became a artist. "I remember the first Renaissance works that I saw in New Delhi at bookstores," he says. "When you know nothing about Western art, and you see these images, they’re absolutely incredible."

His passion only increased when he got to see some of these works up close after moving to London. He says: "When I first saw the [Lucas] Cranach at the National Gallery, which was Venus and Cupid, what struck me was that Venus is wearing the hat of the day. So it is a fashionable lady of that particular moment in time, and you see that marriage of antiquity with so-called current fashion - I thought that was a fabulous painting."

At his new exhibition in Edinburgh Shaw's art will temporarily sit alongside that of Cranach, a German Renaissance painter. He says: "I never imagined that my painting would ever be shown next to the original, and that really means a lot to me."

But Shaw's pieces are quite different to the Renaissance works which he references. He says: "I do hope that my interpretation has the so-called formal qualities that we see in the original Cranach, but at the same time I think this is more experimental and it’s more fun.

"All my paintings are doing is showing my particular journey from the cradle to the grave. I chose the Cranach painting because melancholy is by far the most sophisticated of the human emotions. Melancholy is accepting the fleeting nature of life."

Over the year that the BBC's cameras were following Shaw, he produced five paintings. These are not the work of Shaw's hand alone – he employs a large team, including painters, photographers, sculptors, musicians and even a florist. He says: "If I was to paint a painting on my own, a six foot by four foot painting would take me 11 months.

"We have people who help me with the trees, with the flowers - it just depends on individual specialisation. This is the closest you can get to the most incredible Renaissance atelier [a workshop or studio]."

With their help Shaw says he is able to create the perfect environment for making art: "It's not, 'How important is this space?'. It should be more like, 'What does this space give me in terms of cutting off the rest of the world?'

"I'm left in my own psychological sphere, trying to do some decent paintings. I do not consider myself a so-called artist. I just tried to make the best of whatever situation I'm given. Let's not forget, I'm a refugee from Kashmir."