 Sudarshan Shetty's father, Adve Vasu Shetty was himself a kind of artist, specifically a performer in Yakshagana.There was "a lot of music and singing in the house" where he grew up.Sudarshan Shetty trained in painting at the Sir JJ school of Art, Mumbai, during the late 1980s, but found himself increasingly attracted to the idioms of sculpture and installation.