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Excerpt:
What makes Pushpa special as an artist is that although
she is rooted in her centuries-old tradition, she has
incorporated not only contemporary ideas and treatment
but also an artistic intensity, an aesthetic ideal that
is truly her own. Not content with painting the same
stereotypical images of gods and goddesses or placid
pastoral village scenes, Pushpa constantly seeks out
new subjects, experimenting with new ways to stretch
the boundaries of Madhubani art. She uses her work and
the stylistic devices of Madhubani painting to sharply
focus and at times even subtly challenge
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the subjects she chooses.
The themes for her drawings are garnered from deep
within the Hindu epics and holy scriptures; from folk
stories heard as a child while half-asleep in her grandmother’s
lap; from fragments of conversation remembered at some
later date. And so her pictures depict a wide range
of subjects and events: tales of brave warriors from
ancient history, or universal primordial concerns such
as birth and death, or contemporary issues such as the
female foeticide prevalent in India.
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