Murals....a passion undertaken only by the gifted!!!

I have often wondered how Murals as an art form have come about & evolved!! especially since they can be time consuming & were initially done on a large surface with absolutely no drawing or format as reference.

Murals basically refer to an artwork painted directly on a wall, ceiling or a large permanent surface. Am sure for most of us, the first thing that comes to mind are the paintings on the walls of the Sistine Chapel by Michaelangelo. These were called 'Frescoes' by the Italians & the paint was directly applied on nearly dry plaster of walls or ceilings. The same kind of work can be seen in many heritage palaces in India & down south, closer to home at the Ajantha & Ellora caves...which need to be seen to be believed.

Towards the latter period however, these murals were painted using oil colours on canvas & then later transported to their destination & attached to the walls making the work a lot easier, but then the paintings were pretty dull looking & lost the lustre with age due to deterioration.

To make this same process a lot easier, in recent years digital prints have been produced & applied on walls. But since they are mass produced, they lack the originality of an art work & that's why, we might now be finding a gradual diminishing of these beautiful artworks & thus have to rely more & more on finding genuine antique pieces of work to show us how murals can completely transform our living spaces.