Celebratory Calm Wall Art

Celebratory Calm — 7 museum-grade prints that set the mood. Onam is Kerala's great harvest festival, marking the annual homecoming of the mythical king Mahabali; through the ten days leading to Thiruvonam, families lay a pookalam — a circular carpet of fresh flowers, growing in rings each day — at the threshold to welcome him. The picture is built in the idiom of bhitti chitra, Kerala's temple-mural tradition, which uses 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 signature elongated lotus-shaped eyes. Thrissur Pooram, held at the Vadakkunnathan temple in Thrissur, is one of Kerala's grandest temple festivals — rows of caparisoned elephants, the percussion ensemble, and the kudamattam exchange of brightly coloured silk parasols. The caparison includes the nettipattam, the golden forehead-net, while riders bear the aalavattam round fan, the venchamaram white whisk and the muthukuda decorated parasols, all to the beat of the chenda drums. Vishu is the Malayalam new year, falling in mid-April, and its central ritual is the kani — an auspicious arrangement of golden konna (cassia fistula) blossom, fruit and grain in a brass uruli, with a lit nilavilakku, a mirror, coins and often an image of Krishna, set out the night before so that it is the very first thing the household sees on waking, a sight believed to set the fortune of the coming year. The picture is built in the idiom of bhitti chitra, Kerala's temple-mural tradition, which uses 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 signature elongated lotus-shaped eyes; the green-bodied Krishna follows the murals' guna grammar for the serene divine.

Updated 22 Jun 2026