Concept of my artwork

clay hut, oil layapa color

Oil Layapa Painting:

Basis, Technical Method and Process:

My artwork is based on Socio-natural undiscovered history or image, social custom, caste culture and stratification in our social life, myth, interaction between death and belief. I consider myself as Non-Methodic Cross-Media Artist, living and working in Khulna, Dhaka and Tokyo. I work on oil Layapa painting on shaped canvas or other objects, installations, video, sculpture, light drawing & text-art. My works is a playful, sensual, subtle and process-oriented style. I mostly use stencil style using masking tape and ‘Layapa’ (anoint/plaster) oil paint. ‘Layapa’ is the term I use for applying paint in a manner similar to anointing or plastering. The reason is that traditionally, people in the countryside of Bangladesh and rural India often live in clay huts. Rural people apply many layers of thick-liquid mud, mixed with ‘Cow Dung’ very meticulously on the walls and floor of hut. They use only jute fiber as a brush and anoint by hand. My style of painting is similar to this process. There is a strong belief and philosophy behind this tradition. People still keep cows and cows give different sources for living, from milk, meat, to cow dung cakes for heating, to crop cultivation. 

Cow dung is another source of energy. They make Cow Dung Cake, drying it on the sunlight. They sell or burn these cakes as energy for cooking. There are different types of cow dung that bears a variety of essences, depending on the owner of the cow. Some hold grass, some leaves, some rice husks. Therefore cow dung cake can bear different images and histories depending on where they came from. 

People believe that the smell of the cow dung used on the hut will keep all their cows more energetic and alive and also help the cultivation of crops. The cow is seen as a sacred mother (Hindu belief); the milk can be drunk, but the meat cannot be eaten.

The color Green is significant in my works. It is the color of my country. It is the national color and is also dominates the landscape, so every season from the grass to the trees, everything is green.

I treat my canvases as an object rather than a traditional oil painting surface. I don't want to terminate the painting image into straight shaped canvas. I cut and shape any of canvas sides as like as broken, irregular and cracked shape. My stencil techniques are drawn from another tradition. Stencil is remarkably used during the election periods to make propaganda signs or logo mark. I make the green color by hand from different pigments and liquids along with production paints.

Image of  cow, cow dung

Map of Bangladesh graphed here that where people dwell in clay hut and mud mixed with cow dung is rendered (layapa) on its walls and floors