Phad Art: Divine Tales in Folk Artistic Scrolls from Rajasthan

This style of religious folk painting hails from the western Indian state of Rajasthan. These folk scroll paintings are sketched on a long piece of cloth known as a phad. The two main themes of these paintings connect with the narrative of the folk deities of Rajasthan - Pabuji and Devnarayan. They worshipped as the incarnation of lord Vishnu & Laxman. The phad of Pabuji and Devnarayan, hero-gods of the region, are usually 15 feet and 30 feet long. It depicts the epic narratives of their lifetimes. Paints are naturally sourced organically from vegetable colours. The long Phad art paintings show community religious activities. Interestingly, the art form is accompanied by an age-old established cultural tradition where bhopas- priest singers, carry the painted scrolls and employ them as portable temples of the folk deities. Phad art paintings form is a dramatic backdrop to epic storytelling performances that usually carry on through the night. Thus the paintings are not just artistic scrolls, but objects of religious veneration. An interesting feature of this otherwise flat pictorial narrative art is that the figures in the paintings do not face the audience; rather, they face each other. The Joshi family of the Bhilwara district of Rajasthan is widely acknowledged as the traditional artist family following this folk painting style for the last two centuries.