Reflective note:

From the beginning I wanted to work on colour so I started exploring medias which had colour and where colour was given a lot of importance. The first thing that I thought of researching on was the colours in the different cities of India, but with a bit of research I realized that it was not possible to differentiate the colour palette of the cities as only a handful had a peculiar palette and the rest looked alike.
It was then that I stated exploring more and came down to studying the colour palatte of different genres of music but during the research I realized that this topic was very vast and it didn’t interest me to much.
Finally, I found something of my interest, Palm leaf etching a traditional form of art of Orissa.
I came across this art during my visit to the Dastakar fare, where I even spoke to the artisans.
To get a detailed knowledge of this art it was important to visit the place where it was practiced.
After talking to the artisans I got to know that this art was practiced by a lot of artisans in Raghurajpur village close to Puri, Orissa. I contacted a few artisans from this village and asked it they could help me by providing a bit of information. They all agreed to it and I decided to visit the village.
In the village there were 120 families all engages in some form of art or the other. They were all very helpful and sweet. I visited each and every house in the village and the people were very warm and cordial.
All of them had amazing collection of art and loved showing it. From the kids to the grand parents, all were engaged in some art. The men in the families were more into the detailed form of art like the patachitra, palm leaf etching and ganjifa playing cards. Whereas the females practiced the simpler forms of art like warli paintings on bottles, paintings on coconut and even made borders of patachitra paintings which were very intricate.
I observed the artists painting and etching on palm leaves and they even explained the stories behind the scenes.
The artisans were more than thrilled to give their interview and I got a lot of information from that.
I was there in Puri for 5 days stayed in the village from morning to evening. I really enjoyed going there as the village was cleaner than the city, all the villagers were very helpful and loved looking at the work they did.
I got a lot of information from the artisans and the visit turned out to be quite fruitful.