Transport Lino Cut

The main inspiration for this lino print was from a primary photograph I took of a traffic warden with four fingers at the Tamil Nadu border. Although there was nothing out of the ordinary, really, about this scene, I really liked it because it was totally different to how a service station works in England, as well as his subtle four fingers, and the photograph itself was a nice focused portrait of him; seriously doing his job, but half smiling as he was randomly getting a camera pointed in his face.

The flower pattern on the lower right was inspired by the centre of a celestial women wall painting from Sarveshwar Mahadev Temple, Bhilapur Village.  The more detailed one above it was inspired by a wall painting from Tambekar Wada, Vadodara City.

Transport is a huge adjustment in India compared with England, although there are now more cars than ever before, there is still a diverse array of transport with not many strict road rules. I wanted to incorporate modern day India with the main potrait of the man, with surroundings of the traditions and spiritual links to transport from Indian art, specifically wall paintings (which I studied in my COP project), and religion, specifically the Hindu religion.

The figure in the left hand top corner appears to be a man riding a bird. This is actually Kartikya, the son of Shiva, riding on a peacock. This part of the print was inspired by a wall painting found at Vaso village in Kheda district, which is famous for its havelis. The two most famous Havelis belong to Gopaldas Desai and his brother, Anand Prasad Amin, have the most elaborate wood carving found in Gurajat. Two other havelis belong to Kantibhai Desai and Shri Lashkari. The panels in these two havelis narrate episodes based on the Puranas, soldiers, horse riders, elephants and flowers. Paintings in havelis of this region show a strong influence of Maratha kalam as they were built during the reign of the Gaekwads. These havelis, built around the late nineteenth century, also show introduction of railways and marching European soldiers on some walls. Again the juxtaposition of the old, traditional and spiritual, interwoven with the present day (for the artists at that time).

This elephant rider is harder to see as I carved it amongst the feet of the peacock and the head of the traffic warden. The trunk is not visible either. This does not matter as the point of the incorporation of these surrounding images are to show the emergence of the different elements into the theme of Indian transport. The elephant shown in its entirety is not important.Just a hint of it is enough to show its influence. The elephant is the transport of kings, and so from this you can understand that the image portrayed is that of a royal procession. 

I carved the Goddess Tulja on her vahana, (scorpion) behind the carving of the flower patterns. I like this juxtaposition of the pretty flower pattern with the deadly venom in the scorpions tail, but I think it just makes for a more powerful symbol than purely a deadly scorpion; there is balance. 

I added some more elephants into some smaller areas of the lino, I really like that they are respected as the transport of kings, one palace I visited was built with walls thick enough to stop an elephant getting through, because the kings and armies would ride on these animals in battle. But it still represses the animal by making it a mode of transport.