Light on Culture:
Indian Folk Art Painting

Friday, August 15
11:30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.

Join Indian Folk Artist Mona Pande for an exploration of the vibrant traditions of Pichwai Folk Art and Madhubani Folk Art.

This workshop, presented in partnership with the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts: Folk and Traditional Arts Program, is open to everyone, regardless of age or experience level.

This class is free, but pre-registration is required. There is a maximum of 20 participants.

About Mona Pande

Mona Pande was born in India surrounded by family who immersed her in the practice of traditional Indian folk arts – specifically Madhubani, Rajesthsni Art, Pichwai Art, Rangoli Art, and Warli Art. She remembers vividly seeing her grandmother and aunts painting and being very attached to these various art forms.

“My aunt and my grandmother – they loved painting Rangoli art, Madhubani art and Rajesthsni art. My great-grandfather was a scholar and an Indian folk artist who painted in palaces in Uttaranchal, a fact which I found about from my dad after I started learning traditional arts myself.”

She traveled continually throughout India with her family and learned by watching various art forms performed by both skilled artists and everyday people in many different villages. She was fascinated and emotionally attached but didn’t begin her training until later in life when she began practicing these arts herself. Mona considers herself self-taught, and in the course of her studies, she went back to those many different villages to talk with those traditional artists and practitioners.

“I mainly work in the traditional Indian and folk art like Madhubani, Warli Art, Pichwai art, Rajasthani art, and Kerala mural and Kalighat art. In my paintings, I combine traditional Indian art with an element of my imagination. I have transferred traditional Indian folk art forms, which village women of India did hundreds of years back on their mud hut walls, to my canvases using oil and acrylic paint.”