This picture of a peacock and a peahen presents an amalgamation of beauty, form and color on a bewitching background. These birds adumbrate the mood of spring and festivity. Quite inconspicuous is a fish abridging the distance between the two birds. The fish may escape notice visually, but its importance in Madhubani culture cannot be diminished, it being an emblem of fertility. The whole painting not only emerges from a vivid color sensibility but a perception of a bride and bridegroom symbolised by the peacock and peahen, connected by the fish.
There is lack of realism with the figures hardly bearing the colors it would have in ordinary life. The line of the painting is static and unimportant compared to the color, which is at its emotive best here. Energy and passion find expression through use of bright hues. Shades of yellows, greens and pinks create the mood, determines the tempo, divide the space and provide the background. These fantastically strange colors are an important element in the power of the images.
The black lines outlining the birds are bold, vigorous and firm. The draughtsmanship, symmetry and the color scheme shows artistic maturity which has perfectly mirrored the color and variety of life.
Madhubani art is not a representation of a merely static and inert existence but that of the stream of life flowing through man and nature, flowing from the spiritual to the external and vice versa.
This description by Renu Rana.
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