Under the education programme ‘Do and learn’ organised by Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Manav Sangarahalaya (IGRMS), participants learnt Warli painting from artist of Warkhanda, Dahanu, Palghar and Maharashtra.
Artist Dilip Rama Bhahota and Malti Dilip Bhahota told registered participants that Warli painting is a tribal art mostly done by Adivasi from North Sahyadri Range in India. While there are no records of the exact origins of this art, its roots may be traced to as early as the 10th century AD.
The Warli paintings which have close resemblance to cave paintings, have often been spotted on the insides of red ochre walls of huts that are built using a mixture of tree branches, mud and cow dung. The paintings are made using a sticky paste of rice and water, which is used with the help of chewed bamboo sticks as paintbrushes.
The Warli painting depicts day-to-day activities of people of the tribe and hence they are mostly paintings on harvest, festival, folk story, celebration, temple marriage etc. Ritualistic Warli painting: In every religious/ritual warli painting, there is a central character which is called the chauk/chaukat where the goddess of fertility Palghtatta is depicted.
The chaukat in these ritual paintings is surrounded by scenes portraying hunting, fishing and farming, festivals and dances, trees and animals. Human and animal bodies are represented by two triangles joined at the tip; the upper triangle depicts the trunk and the lower triangle the pelvis.