Tense Wall Art

Tense — 2 museum-grade prints that set the mood. Kalighat Pat grew up in 19th-century Kolkata, painted by patua (chitrakar) scroll-painters who settled near the Kalighat Kali temple and sold quick watercolours to pilgrims. Alongside gods and goddesses they painted the everyday and athletic people of Calcutta — wrestlers, musicians, milkmaids — in the same economical, muscular line, which is why the form is often called India's first modern popular art. DESIGN BRIEF: the brief was to remember the forest hunt, not stage a kill, so the centre gives the deer their leap — slender bodies mid-stride, branching antlers — with the bowmen's bent bows trained after them across the band and small trees standing between, the tension held rather than resolved. We kept the deer distinct and well-spaced against the breathing warm-maroon ground, holding the fill to medium with a bold open fish-net frame rather than a merged mesh, so animals and archers never melt together.

Updated 22 Jun 2026