Deshmukh is like a snail and he does love his shell; his meditative still-life images emerge from the need to withdraw from chaos to a world of order and quietness. His legacy of abstraction has been nurtured in the Mumbai, the home of abstraction in India.

Drawing and sincere draftsmanship have shaped Deshmukh's oeuvre as an artist. His study of objects and their simplification is an effort to grasp the form, contours and the space in between. He works from actual objects and retains their proportions. They become intimate autobiographical evocations as seen in the works of the celebrated Italian painter Morandi who devoted his career to painting the still-life of every day reality. One can draw parallels between both these artists' sympathy towards and celebration of these humble objects.