A couple of days back, I was upcycling some glass bottles into vases, late in the night and as I completed each one, I would share its image with my friend online. Just then, she mentioned WARLI and that got us into discussing some ideas about our next long-distance art project together.
Now, WARLI Art is a cultural intellectual property of a Marathi tribal community. The monosyllabic depictions in the paintings use the very basic graphic vocabulary of circles, triangles, squares and lines to express everyday life and activities, dance, music, hunting-gathering, farming, festivals, trees and animals, recreation and so on. Having spent some 3 years in Maharashtra, I have had my encounters with this art, and it never really engaged me. But somehow, this time, it did.
So the next day, I found myself combing through web-pages about WARLI and I decided to surprize my friend by making my renditions of some paintings I really liked. Since this was my first time with this endeavor, I needed some inspiration and guidance to create my own versions of the paintings.
But very honestly, once I started, it got me hooked. In a straight go, I made 3 paintings in 2 hours, and reveled in the liberation that "painting" as an activity always offers me. Here is what I made - in order of completion:
1. WARLI SUNSET:
P.S: I love the "Oye! Its Friday!!" feel that I can visualize within each of these 6 folks.
2. WARLI PEACOCK:
3. WARLI RAAS:
I am still learning this art and I have begun working on the new idea that was brewing up in our heads (My and My Friend's) a while ago.
I really hope the new idea takes shape the way we want it to, and when that happens, I shall post about that too.
Till then, if you are wondering what I do for the remaining part of the day, when I am not WARLI-ing, I allow you the pleasure of unadulterated guesswork...!!! :)
Now, WARLI Art is a cultural intellectual property of a Marathi tribal community. The monosyllabic depictions in the paintings use the very basic graphic vocabulary of circles, triangles, squares and lines to express everyday life and activities, dance, music, hunting-gathering, farming, festivals, trees and animals, recreation and so on. Having spent some 3 years in Maharashtra, I have had my encounters with this art, and it never really engaged me. But somehow, this time, it did.
So the next day, I found myself combing through web-pages about WARLI and I decided to surprize my friend by making my renditions of some paintings I really liked. Since this was my first time with this endeavor, I needed some inspiration and guidance to create my own versions of the paintings.
But very honestly, once I started, it got me hooked. In a straight go, I made 3 paintings in 2 hours, and reveled in the liberation that "painting" as an activity always offers me. Here is what I made - in order of completion:
1. WARLI SUNSET:
P.S: I love the "Oye! Its Friday!!" feel that I can visualize within each of these 6 folks.
2. WARLI PEACOCK:
3. WARLI RAAS:
I am still learning this art and I have begun working on the new idea that was brewing up in our heads (My and My Friend's) a while ago.
I really hope the new idea takes shape the way we want it to, and when that happens, I shall post about that too.
Till then, if you are wondering what I do for the remaining part of the day, when I am not WARLI-ing, I allow you the pleasure of unadulterated guesswork...!!! :)
Good Art-Work :) ..and last para is really funny :D
ReplyDeleteThanks :D
DeleteWow, Great creativity :)
ReplyDeleteLove to read your articles.
Thanks a lot LB!! And keep visiting, there's a lot of interesting stuff coming soon.. :)
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