Kerala Mural Painting on Pot - A Fusion of Styles

I came across this beautiful painting on a pot in the house of my friend’s acquaintance. She very kindly allowed me to photograph it.

The figure is done in the same style as the Mural Paintings of Kerala, but the colours used were different – a fusion work.

These days we come across a lot of fusion work. There is fusion cooking, fusion fashion – we call it Indo-Western wear, fusion music…. the list is endless. Fusion is a blending of cultures – it is an acceptance of different aspects of what we like in other cultures. We adapt the differences to suit our tastes, needs, pleasures… call it what you will.

While fusion is good and more often than not tasteful, we should also take care to preserve the originality of the various cultures. The best way to do this would be to learn thoroughly, how a particular thing was originally done before stepping into the world of fusion.

This is more so because fusion does not necessarily pay attention to the intricate details of the original art – be it cooking, dress, music, art, dance forms or whatever… and we know that anything that is not built on a strong foundation will definitely collapse sooner or later.

This picture shows details of the crown. Sticking artificial stones and pearls and giving the ornaments a 3-dimensional effect using M-Seal, is something I would like to try out.

Here is a close-up showing how the pot itself was treated.