Come, join the Warli circle time

Namaste!

I live in one of the most beautiful places on the earth – the green Sahyadris. My people love music, dance, the sun, the moon, the earth, the trees. But we mostly like drawing people dance the Tarpa and have a great time.

We can do this because we have been watching people and nature over centuries. Our Warli mothers have learned to coax more than one movement from simple geometric shapes. When they draw triangles, squares and lines on cow-dung pasted on our mud walls, they make the whole village, its river, the Tarpa dance and the village dog. You could tell a story with one line or 10. We learnt to draw from our mothers.

Warli art is how our community found a language to tell our stories. We did not create the art but it has carried us through all the changes. We sons paint not just the Warli tribe, one of the biggest in India. We stay away from big city Mumbai but we feel all the changes, the anger of nature, the dying lakes, the flooded cities and the virus that has kept us in lockdown for too long. To me, Warli art now tells India’s stories.

And that is what I am here to teach you, no matter your level of experience. We will draw simple Warli motifs together in this new workshop. I will be there to hold your hand all the way. You will learn how easy it is to make trees, village scenes, dancers, musicians, harvest and all our village animals. I will show you how to draw straight lines, circles and triangles and how to bring them together to show a father and child on a bike. We will make a tree, what I consider our life-giver, and many swaying plants. Have you tried neat borders with some design? We will make some.

It will be such fun drawing together. Join me.

Sanjay Bhau.

Sign Up For Catterfly Warli Masterclass:?https://bit.ly/WarliMasterclass

Warli painting is one of the oldest & finest tribal art forms of India. The original practitioners are the Warlis, a tribe that still lives in and around the north Sahyadri range in Maharashtra's Palghar district just outside Mumbai. The Warli style came to fore only in the 1970s though the art is supposed to have Neolithic origins. Elements of nature, community life and celebrations are focal points in Warli. Veteran artist Sanjay Sangle has been shaped by these traditions passed down by the original artists of his community - Warli women. He captures the pulse of his tribe through his paintings, and does contemporary versions in the path forged by the late Jivya Soma Mashe, the father of modern Warli art.