Tatwa in Bengali Marriage

 I went to India for a month to attend my sister's marriage. As you all know, when it comes to marriages, it is the biggest event for Indian family. It's all about celebrations, gifts and endless enjoyment. The rituals slightly vary and are unique to the region depending on the community you belong to. West Bengal, the state from where I am is mainly resided by Bengalis. Bengali marriage is typically of three days of celebrations following month long preparations. There can be a book long discussion with every ritual and every preparation for it.I'm not going in every detail of it but focusing mainly in one ritual in which my Artist heart took part.

As a custom, both the bride and groom's family exchange gifts. On the day of the marriage, groom's family send gifts to bride as a blessings which is called "Gatraharidra Tatwa" which includes Sarees, cosmetics and accessories along with a fish and sweets. However, on the third day of marriage bride's family send gifts to the groom's family as a blessings to the newly married couple.The idea behind this "Fulosajja tatwa" is to contribute something to the newly married ones to start their journey together.

As we were from the bride's side we were supposed to send the gifts for "Fulsajjar Tatwa". With the evolution of marriage one custom started that is to wrap the gifts in  decorative ways.  My guess is that it started with some creative mind in some family and everybody liked the idea so much that finally it was included as a custom. Now-a-days, with our busy lifestyle and lack of time most of the time it becomes a burden. There are some professionals or expert creative people just to help you wrap the gifts. And I must admit that's a great help and they do a real good job.

I went home two weeks before marriage and decided to wrap all the gifts by my own  with  the help of my dad in a simple way so that I can help in other preparation without investing lot of time in it. As a craft loving person it was an opportunity for me to do  what I enjoy  the most.

 I made designs on some strip of papers to use these as borders on the gift box. It was fun as my dad even my sister was providing new ideas. 

                                        Strip of papers which I used as borders of the gift boxes.

Final product 

Other than wrapping the gifts  we need to prepare a list of gifts which is called "tatwasuchi"  we decided to make a palanquin which is generally known as "palki" in Bengal. In ancient India it was the mode of transportation specially for women. With the introduction and evolution of  automobile the use of palki declined and mainly was used for the marriage to carry the bride to the groom's house. I used a box to make the structure. My dad made the poles with paper and the curtain. Curtain was the hardest part as we were struggling to glue it to the box.

                                                            My Niece with the 'Palki"

Featured in "Indian talent Magazine"

Wow! good news to share. I'm featured in Indian Talent Magazine February, 2014 Edition. Read about me. Thank you for all your love and support.

Adora Art Project

Hanan Levin is a single dad from Corona, CA who has cute, little, adorable daughter named Adora He recently requested me to contribute to his on growing and unique Adora Art Project . I was very touched with his innovative way of expressing love and affection to her daughter.  Check this out and I bet you'll feel the same like me.  Other than his affectionate mind, he has also provided a great platform for various artists to showcase their work. Here's a Write Up of this cool initiative.

Here's my painting, I used this photo as a reference.
<

Maroon Bells

My dear friend Ankita made a recent trip to Colorado with her family and subsequently shared some picturesque snaps in Facebook. That's how I got to see this photograph of Maroon Bells below captured by her husband, Niladri. Since I didn't know about this place, I immediately googled "Maroon Bells" and  found lots of photographs on this heavenly site. All of them were equally amazing but I personally got hooked to this one and decided to use it for my next Landscape painting. The reflection of the rocks on the water surface in this photograph attracted me the most. I must say Niladri did a real good job in capturing the serenity of the place.

                                                         

Photo Courtesy Niladri Das

Lemme tell ya - normally, any Landscape painting with a water body makes a huge difference to it, whether it's a running stream or a quite lake.  In the case of  the running stream, the flow of  the water creates the magic but for quite water body, all that matters is the reflection. Maroon bells is widely popular  among artists for the reflection of these peaks. Normally Artists use the wind effect on water surface to differentiate the reflections  from the real objects and I must admit that's not a very easy job. But the photograph Niladri took is with calm reflections just creating a perfect  mirror image. Only difference is the presence of rocks on the water surface which according to me is the key to differentiate real objects from the reflections. Only thing I have changed in the painting is adding fall colors to the mountains.

Thank you Ankita and Niladri for this awesome snap.

                                                                       "Maroon Bells"
                                                              Acrylic on Canvas ( 18" x 24" )

Happy Friendship Day

Happy Friendship day to all my readers. 
I started this sketch of my husband as a practice one. Later I kind of like it as a first attempt and thought of gifting it to him as a friendship day gift. 

An Interesting Find

 My husband is a foodie and so am I. We both love to explore new places - right from local joints to pricey dine-in restaurants  (obviously not so frequently as our pockets don't permit ). We normally prefer local joints than the chains and for the review ratings he religiously follows  yelp and tripadvisor. We both like Mediterranean food a lot (Thanks to local Sahara for patronizing our love. We make sure to visit at least once a week). And part of it is because of  it's striking familiarity to our aged Indian taste buds. Generally, we avoid eating Indian (as we have it at home everyday) when we go for eating out. However in case the reviews say "out of the world" or "100 things to eat before die" kind of stuff then only we make an exception to our self imposed rule :P Recently we were in Oklahoma City and like always we satiated ourselves with a plethora of versatile cuisines. And one day we came across an authentic Mexican local joint named "Taco San Pedro".The joint churns out some of the best signature Mexican soul food at throw away prices -however what caught my attention was a completely different ball game.

Oh! yes, I know it's not a food blog and I'm not going to talk about  food any more. Today I'm here to share some paintings which I found on the walls of " Taco San Pedro". I googled the artist's name but couldn't  get any further info about him/her. I was very interested to know more mainly because of the painting style which is more like we see in trucks, theater backgrounds or in calenders in India. The similarity amazed me and I can't resist myself from sharing.

                                                                  Name of  the Artist

"Sonar Horin" - The Golden Deer

Back again with my "calendar-style" painting !  Of Late I have been very busy with my work, but that doesn't give me an excuse to be away from my favourite leisure job for so long. I promise myself to be more regular in future .... anyways no more hanky panky, lets talk about my latest venture. It has a very interesting mythological story behind it which is one of my all time favourites as well .

Yes! you are right this painting is from "Ramayana". Those of you who are still wondering, this is a depiction of one of the famous scenarios of the Indian Epic "Ramayana". Although  given the size of the book, no wonder very few Indians have actually read the whole epic. Most of us have been satisfied watching the TV series "Ramayana" directed by Ramananda Sagar or at max have read a few chapters from it (thanks to our middle school curriculum !) . However we all can somehow recollect the whole story for sure in bits and pieces. I vaguely remember the episodes of "Ramayana" but thanks to Youtube for providing us access to those golden childhood memories. 

I highly recommend Sita sings the Blue by Nina Paley where she has tried to catch the emotions of Sita through her wonderful animation. Though it's mainly sarcastic, still it's well enough to unravel the inner message beneath. 

Another song I would love to share here is from the Bollywood movie "Swadesh" - Pal Pal he Bhari. The only essence I get from it is Sita's palpable love for her husband - even after so many days of hardship, she is all praises about her husband. The enormous magnitude of love and trust that she has for her dear husband is the highlight of this song. Although "trust" is one of those very few adjectives that is perhaps not applicable to Rama. Infact it was this very "Trust" that didn't bring happy ending to Ramayana , even the deep love that he had for his wife Sita could not save it. Check out the video of this song if you feel like.

Rama and Sita 

The picture that I have drawn this time is the focal point of the story. I'm not going to get into the details - in short, Sita was amazed by seeing the golden deer (which was Maaricha, a demon in disguise) and wanted to pet it.  

              Maaricha - the demon in disguise

She insisted Rama to fetch it for her. Now Rama was very much aware of the fact that Golden deer was a myth. Still he went to catch it because he was so much in love with her and  all he wanted was to bring a smile on her face. Here I wanted to capture a moment of their undying love for each other. 

I have tried to create the serene beauty of Panchavati  forest ( where Rama, Sita and Laxman were staying during their exile). I chose Hibiscus, Ixora (also known as Rangan in Bengali , Tagar or Chadni and small summer sunflower as garden plants ( these flower plants are very common in West Bengal as well as in all parts of India). Waterfall is enough to pop the beauty and almost in every calender you'll find one. 

The "Panchavati" Forest

Original Painting

This is a high resolution picture of my painting "Sonar Horin - The Golden Deer" done in June 2013. The original was painted in acrylic paints on 16” x 20” Canvas. Please email me at huensplash@gmail.com if you are interested in buying my original artwork.

" Sonar Horin " - The Golden Deer

Acrylic on Canvas ( 16" x 20" )