If you have ever soaked rice, ground it into a thick, smooth paste and made an elaborate kolam with it on a rough, uneven space and gave it a bright border with red-earth mix, you will have some idea of Sunita’s art.
For Sunita and the other women in the village of Ramsingpura in Rajasthan, this was not “art” the way we understand it. They clean the kutcha uneven walls and floors periodically, and slather on a mix of cowdung, earth and ground hay made smooth by kneading with the feet for long hours. The surfaces are then covered with fine mud — all by hand, all by women. The painting is done on this earthy canvas with white (clay) and red (harmach) colours. It’s a tradition to spruce up the walls, courtyard and edges of floors before Diwali, Holi and Makarsankaranthi.
Sunita learned the Meena tribe’s (to which she belongs) Mandana art by watching. At nine she knew she could draw, and at her grandma’s house where she lived till she was 18, she was given a rough, unprepared spot to practise. After school, holding between her fingers cotton dipped in the white paste, she would squeeze out neat patterns. “I improved as I got older,” she said. She also got married, moved to a rented, pucca, white-washed, cement house in Jaipur and forgot the art she was exceptionally good at. Her writer-husband Prabhu asked her to paint, continue her education, but her two children kept her busy.
Meanwhile, the Digantar Sanstha was bringing out text books in Hindi for primary classes. At her husband’s prodding Sunita attended an interview and was roped in to do illustrations for textbooks for classes IV and V. “I read them, I could relate to the familiar folk tales in the books,” she said. Chakmak , a children’s magazine from Bhopal published Prabhu’s lok-kathas retold, and again Sunita was asked to draw the pictures. “My paintings are going to be on the cover,” she trilled.
In 2008 Tara published Nurturing Walls, a book that explores Mandana paintings. In 2011 the publisher invited five artists for interactions with visitors. Madan, the book’s author brought Sunita and her family to Chennai. “We painted on the wall and floor, got a lot of praise. A film was made about us.” It is here she “learnt to do finger-painting on huge sheets of brown paper and canvas.” And she is working on a children’s book with Tara Books.
From brown earth walls to brown construction paper. From a remote village to recognition in a city. On Sunita’s canvases you will find animals, fishes, trees, leaves, geometrical patterns of dots, swirls and straight lines. Some are simply border drawings. They are two-dimensional, with no attempt to show depth, and that is the uniqueness of the paintings. “Mandana painting is different from other forms,” she said. She visits the villages around Sawai Madhopur where she lives now, “to look at the new designs women are trying out.”
“To be authentic, these paintings should only be done on a raw floor or wall,” she said, but that space is shrinking. “Village women are opting for brick-cement-limewash houses,” she added wistfully. Kutcha houses are now used for animals, though traditionally cattle-sheds also got painted. “Walls don’t get painted anymore.” Continuing this art is difficult, she said. It is done entirely by hand, after work in the kitchen, fields and taking care of children. “In summer when we slog men play cards, lounge around. Electricity is erratic, we paint by chimney light.”
But in between all this she will pursue her art. “It is a tradition. Without it life is empty. It is beauty, or it would not have survived.” She is happy her drawings are given great care in the city. “In the village rains wash them out, sunlight fades them, and we do them all over again, year after year.” When she builds her house, a portion will surely have kutcha walls for her to paint often. “We never thought of it as “art”. It was our jeevan.”
For more, visit Book Building (Tara Books, 4260 1033) where Sunita held a demo.
