Warli Painting: The Language of the Warli tribe

Warli is a quotidian art that flourishes especially in recent times. It appears anywhere and everywhere including dress materials, bag prints, paintings, and many more. In those days the first drawing by a little champ would be the common apple with its leaf. But today, from a kid to an old lady, anyone can be an artist because of Warli for its easy figures and captivating delivery.

The brown beauty of Warli painting; Source:istock

People have conventional ideas about tribes. Their language, behavior, dressing, and lifestyle everything gave an idea about the tribals to the non-ethnic groups. But it is quite disappointing to note that we failed to praise their artistic skills. The most famous painting that we are seeing today with men and women in line form is with triangles and circles comes under a specific type of art called Warli. This art belongs to a particular tribal group, Warli.

Warli is one of the largest tribes in India which chiefly occupies the western part of India, especially the North Sahyadri Range in Maharashtra. The art originated from this tribe and in these areas they are still practicing it. As we all know that during those days, Art played a major role in writing history. Similarly, the Warli tribal people designed Warli paintings as their way of recording their stories to pass on to the next generation about them and their living. Henceforth, the Warli has nature and its elements as the focal points, including the depiction of farming as that was the large source of food for them.

Warli people used their huts as their canvas. The walls of the huts became the backdrop for their art. It is quite interesting to note how they made use of what they had. The walls of their huts were not made of blocks of cement and brick that we have today, they are made of branches, earth, and red brick that serve as the red ochre background. Hence, the old Warli painting has the standard background of red and paint only in white color. This white paint is also natural which is a mixture of rice flour and water with gum to bind. Now the paper and paint are ready. We need a brush to start painting. Again their smartness played a role here. By chewing the end of a bamboo stick they made a natural paintbrush.

Warli painting is an easily identified art that stands alone for the figures made out of geometric shapes. They have a regular pattern and fixed shapes. For instance, the circle represents the sun and the moon. Squares represent the land. Triangle depicts the conical trees and mountains. In any ritual Warli painting if you take, the central square motif is the chauk or chaukat. It is of two types Devchauk and Lagnachauk.

Devchauk usually depicts the Palaghata who is the ‘Goddess of fertility’. Male gods take human forms and are surrounded by their routine scenes like hunting, farming, fishing, trees, and animals. Apart from this, festivals and dances of the Warli tribes are also depicted in the Warli picturesque. The tarpa dance is the most commonly found painting of Warli seen anywhere. There will be a tarpa player at the center, surrounded by entwined hands of rounding men and women. Tarpa is an instrument like a trumpet. The dancers follow the tarpa player. They move either clockwise or anti-clockwise according to the two different notes played by the musicians.

Two inverted triangles jointly represent humans and animals, symbolizing the balance of the universe where the upper triangle is the torso and the lower triangle is the pelvis. To differentiate men and women, the larger triangle at the top represents the man, and the wider at the bottom represents the woman.

Today Warli has become so common among the surroundings that it is even available in many forms. Though paintings can be done anywhere like paper, board, or canvas, Warli took the spot of walls. In Tamil Nadu there is a community called Ainootram Chettiyar who used to paint the entrance of their houses in Warli style on an auspicious day before their wedding. They celebrate it as a part of their wedding and the function is known as Pattai Vaathal.

The tuneful Warli painting Source:gaonconnection