Folk Arts of India - Painting : Madhubani

India is a land of diverse art forms matured over millennia by constant practice and use. Her warm weather, cycle of seasons and vivacious flora and fauna inspires her people to create vibrant art forms. In India art is an integral  part of living that is woven into every day activities. It is not something to be placed on a pedestal and observed in galleries. In this series of articles, we introduce some of the wonderful traditional arts from India that have inspired our artists.  

Madhubani or Mithila Art:

Evolution

Mithila art is a style of painting that has been traditionally practiced by women from the culture and tradition rich villages around Mithila region of Bihar state in India and adjoining parts of the Terai region in Nepal. Traditionally, painting was done on freshly plastered mud walls of huts, using pointed sticks or a handmade cloth brush with colors derived from plants. Now it is also done on cloth, hand-made paper and canvas. They are either in black and white or vibrantly colored.  

Madhubani paintings use two-dimensional imagery and mostly depict nature, Hindu motifs and stories from mythology. For example, the Sun, the Moon, fish, plant of Tulsi, deities like Radhe-Krishna, Goddess Durga, Saraswati, Ramayana stories, Shiva in form of ‘Ardhanarinateshwar’ etc. The paintings were usually done on walls during festivals, religious events, and other milestones in life, such as birth, sacred thread ceremony and marriage. Madhubani paintings contain intricate patterns in the spaces of the paintings. Symbolism associated with snake and fish is that of fertility and is usually painted for marriage.

A guest artist for Heart2Heart, Varsha Dabholkar has used this style to express her ideas in the card 'Evolution'.

Folk Arts of India - Wall Art : Warli

India is a land of festivals and diversity. Her warm weather, cycle of seasons and vivacious flora & fauna inspires her inhabitants to bring the vibrancy of color, flow and expression in their day to day living without putting it on pedestal. In this series of articles, we will introduce the wonderful traditional arts from India.

Warli Paintings:

Warli Dance

Warli painting is a form of art that uses pictographs of white rice flour expressing folk life of the Warli people on the mud walls of their huts. Literally meaning a 'piece of field', Warla is a tribal population from the western ghats of the state of Maharashtra. Women usually indulge in this art during ceremonies, social gatherings and harvest seasons. Their paintings depict human and animal figures using geometric shapes of circles, triangles and squares, connected with dashes and dots, engaged in activities like cooking, farming, hunting, and celebrating with scenes of their villages or the surrounding countryside.

Many tribal artists have won prestigious awards for rejuvenating this simple, childlike art form. In modern times it continue to emphasize the inter-connectedness of human beings and nature on handmade papers and wooden articles. For the Warlis, life is an eternal circle. At the occasions of birth, marriage, and death, they draw circles that are symbolic of Mother Goddess. Death is not the end for them; rather it is a new beginning. This is why circles best represent the art of Warli, which has neither an end nor a beginning.

An artist from Heart2Heart, Shyamal Khadye is inspired to create the card ‘Warli Dance’in this style.