Creating Warli art has the meditative effect similar to that of a daily prayer on me. When I pick up my 12/0 painting brush my fingers exude with an energy so exuberant and transformative – like that of the inside of a caterpillar just before its metamorphosis to a butterfly. My eyes sparkle with the jubilation of the infinite creative possibilities that lie ahead. When I dip the paint brush in the teeny tiny driblet of paint – my entire being is enthralled with the wondrous excitement of magic which is about to be created on my canvas. And as the brush starts its tete-e-tete with canvas – my soul’s journey to its happy place begins. What follows then is a symphony of dots and lines and triangles and circles, all coming together to create the music of everyday life on the canvas. After each stroke, as I lift my brush to dip it in the paint, my soul gets more and more in harmony with the energies of the universe and then… the “I” disappears. For being able to reach that state, I am blessed and eternally grateful.
I grew up thinking that since I can’t draw, hence I can’t make paintings, and so art and its shenanigans are not my forte. However, a secret desire to create artwork always harbored. My encounter with Warli art proved to be a silver lining, and through Warli I found a way to not only creatively express myself, but cherish the process as well. I absolutely love creating Warli art, and it feels that my Warli art pieces respond back to me with generous encouragement, for, before one art piece ends, motivation for the next one surfaces mystically. I love creating intricate, detailed and symmetrical patterns and the art form welcomes all of these with a loving embrace. Art and other such creative endeavors best serve us when creating them gives us happiness. Putting the creator in harmony with the universe’s energies is what all creative pursuits are meant to do. Everything else including name / fame / praise / recognition / money will follow, if it has to. Without the former happening though, the latter will always remain definitely elusive.
Albert Einstein has said “if you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough”. Warli art is an epitome of this expression for the art world – for using just lines and circles Warli art lets you lay out the entire human life in as simplistic and realistic manner as one can imagine. It is practiced by tribal people from the North Sahyadri Range in Maharashtra, India and is typically done on the walls of the house, using rice paste as white color, and back of broom stick as paint brush. No elaborate art supplies needed.
From being someone who never could create drawings / art work as a kid (in spite of having arts as a subject through-out), to being someone whose art pieces adorn walls of friends’ houses (IG: simlply_folk_art) – it might sound like quite a journey. But it really isn’t. If your heart desires something with all sincerity, the universe will indeed show ways to get you to that. The key thing is to stay open and recognize the ways of the universe when they present themselves – and present they will. Typically we get so fixated on how we think we can achieve what we want, that we close ourselves to other possible avenues. Universe works in ways mysterious to us mortals. We need to leave room for the universe to spray its magic while we do our karma.
What I did learn in the process is that “not a creative person” is an oxymoron. Swami Vivekananda has said: ‘Expansion is life, contraction is death’. As long as we are alive – we are all energy emanating beings, and have that energy at our disposal. That is a fact. Many of us have found ways to channel that energy and few are searching still. That is all there is to it!
Eureka! Eureka! 