Mural paintings have been part of Kerala temple culture since time immemorial. The present day artists were kind enough to mainstream this beautiful art form by painting them on canvases with acrylics. In an instant the whole of Kerala fell under the mural painting’s spell. Like any loyal, artistically inclined Malayali (people from Kerala; our mother tongue is Malayalam hence the name) I too was spell bound at their beauty and the liberal use of bright colors. By now, you would have guessed….ya on my last trip to India I went mural painting shopping. I met a very talented artist Saju Thuruthil and loved his paintings. But there was one problem. The house wasn’t built yet and we didn’t know where exactly we would hang the painting. We couldn’t even specify what theme or how big a painting we wanted. That was the end of the mural painting hunt.
Back to reality; I painted my powder room SW Hopsack, which is on the darker side. The dark shade made the windowless room appear stuffy. Changing the light blubs to fluorescents brightened the space up while saving us some energy costs. Still it needed something to jazz it up. I really really needed something colorful to distract folks from the blah oval builder mirror (We will change that some day, but not now). And I thought “How about a mural painting? Maybe I can try my hand at painting one?” I was not even sure of where that came from. I hadn’t taken even a single art class or painted anything other than walls (and some small canvases that I tried to paint after seeing Bob Ross’s how to videos during my early US days) in my life.
So, what was the problem? Kerala mural paintings typically feature religious themes. I felt uncomfortable about placing a religious image in a bathroom. For my first attempt, I wanted to paint something easy and straightforward. After researching online, I found inspiration for this project.