Rooted Wall Art

Rooted — 31 museum-grade prints that set the mood. DESIGN BRIEF: the brief was the tree of life as the whole panel, so a single great tree rises from the foot and spreads its rounded boughs to fill most of the field, perched birds and a pair of peacocks at the crown, climbers threading the branches. We held the fill to medium and kept the fish-net frame open rather than a packed mesh, letting clear brick-red ground show through the gaps in the boughs so the tree breathes and the birds and climbers stay legible. Ardhanareeswara — the half-Shiva, half-Parvati form — embodies the inseparability of the masculine and feminine principles, and it is a natural subject for bhitti chitra, Kerala's temple-mural tradition that flourished roughly from the 16th to 19th century and is still painted today. These murals use the panchavarna five-colour system — red, yellow, green, black and white over an ochre ground — in flat opaque fields bounded by a bold lamp-black outline, with the school's elongated lotus-shaped eyes. Kerala's Malabar coast was the hinge of the global spice trade for two millennia — black pepper, cardamom and cinnamon drew Roman, Arab, Chinese and later European ships to Kochi, Kozhikode and Kollam. This print sets that everyday merchant inside bhitti chitra, Kerala's temple-mural tradition that flourished roughly from the 16th to 19th century and is still painted today: flat panchavarna pigments (red, yellow, green, black, white over an ochre ground), a bold lamp-black outline, and the school's elongated lotus-shaped eyes.

Updated 22 Jun 2026