Look Here! Flora and Fauna

Having had a long interest in Asian art history, much of the artwork I've made in recent years has been based on ancient Buddhist and Hindu sculpture studied on research trips to Bhutan, India, and Thailand.  

So on my first research visit to the UWM Special Collections library for the "Look Here!" initiative, I was immediately taken with the Dados volume of the Jeypore Portfolio of Architectural Detail. (Three volumes of the beautiful 12 volume portfolio are housed in the UWM library.) 

Dado is an architectural term that describes a panel above the chair rail. This area is given a decorative treatment. 

The illustrations recorded lovely low relief wall carvings of landscapes. A wide variety of different trees and plants are represented in a stylized treatment.

I fell in love with this image of monkeys playing in a Banyan tree where cattle graze below. 

It reminded me of this ancient tree I visited on the banks of the Ganges where Paramahansa Yogananda walked  in Serampore, West Bengal, India.

The nursing cow portrayed on the panel was much like some folk paintings I've seen decorating trucks in India.

Another intriguing image showed a wilder side of nature. A family of lions play under the watch of vultures. This scene contrasts with the more gentle pastoral scene.

The style of this portrayal of lions reminded me of the large ceramic statue of a lion I had made in 1983 during my senior year of high school. 

A table cloth with an intricate design of abstracted tree-like forms serves as the ground for these paintings. The border on this cloth creates a wide frame not unlike the complex frames on the dado panels.

Deciding that this white fabric looked too clean and new, I decided to try my luck with a natural indigo dye* bath.

*Indigo dye, cultivated in India, was in high demand during the 19th century, so is in keeping with the time period the portfolio was produced. (Farmers in Bengal revolted against the unfair treatment by the East India Company during British rule in 1859 in what was known as the Indigo revolt).

First a light soak created delicate blue which allowed the golden pattern and yellow color to show.

I worried about losing this pattern when I chose to dip the fabric in the indigo bath longer to achieve a deeper blue, so opted for a gradient ombre effect.

Flora and Fauna II, 2017

58 x 49 1⁄2 inches

Acrylic on indigo dyed fabric

Flora and Fauna I, 2017

 58 x 49 1⁄2 inches

Acrylic on indigo dyed fabric 

Originally these paintings were planned as stretched canvases, but I decided later that they should hang as scrolls. A golden Kalamkari fabric was used to add contrast and warmth to the mostly blue and white paintings. The large common area outside my Kenilworth studio served as a great place to lay these out while cutting the large fabric pieces.!

The finished diptych with rods spans 12 feet.

The next blog post will show more paintings in my Rajasthan Reimagined series for the Look Here! exhibition to be held June 28 - September 16, 2018 at the Villa Terrace Decorative Arts Museum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 

This diptych is now available for purchase online at my Etsy shop CynthiaHayesArt

Check out my artwork available at my Etsy store and on my Facebook page as well as my Instagram feed.