Artist : Bapi Chitrakar
Title : Godh Bharai
Medium : Natural colours on paper & cloth
Size : 22” x 28”
Year : 2024
About a decade ago, ‘potua’ art was written off as a dying folk art form, as “chitrakars” began drifting away from their traditional occupation in search of a livelihood. Thanks to the timely intervention of various agencies, it has undergone a revival and today the ‘patachitra’ has reached national and international forums.
“Patta” literally means “cloth” and “chitra” means “picture” in Sanskrit. The materials used are all indigenous and inexpensive, coming from vegetable, earth, and mineral sources. Conch shells, crushed, boiled and filtered, are used for white, black comes from lamp soot, red from ‘hingulal’ stone, green comes from plants and blue from indigo. These extracts are then cooked with the gum from the ‘kaintha’ (elephant apple) fruit tree and applied. The Midnapore ”potuas” usually draw and paint their stories on a long piece of jute or handmade paper, the themes being epic and Puranic anecdotes, gods and goddesses, folktales and myths, ceremonies and incidents of daily life - farming, dancing, wedding and shaad ceremonies, and different species of Indian fauna.