The East Asia culture has been decorating the walls of monasteries, temples and homes with scroll paintings. Nepal’s Tibetan and Newar styles come from a time when the culture of Thangkas & Paubhas reached to the zenith. Most of the older surviving scroll paintings are the reminders of a period when the rulers and the public took arts as offerings to the deities.
The Tibetan art of the Thangkas and the Newari Paubhas are Nepal’s contribution to the world of symbolic art. These paintings are not only used for religious purpose locally, bit they also generate a vast local and international market. The Thangkas and Paubhas art works are the most popular souvenir items from Nepal.
While Thangkas paintings portray the Tibetan Buddhist rituals in Nepal’s north, the Mithila paintings illustrate the social & religious lifestyle in Nepal’s southern plains. Interestingly, Mithila paintings traditionally seem to be the domain of the women only, the men started taking interest only later for commercial and identity interests. The Mithila paintings are known as ‘Madhubani paintings’ in India and ‘Janakpur paintings’ in Nepal.
During festival times, women clean the houses & decorate the wall with paintings. These wall paintings are very easily washes away by wind, sun, and rain, but are again restored by the women in the next festival time.
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