'People's art in India does not wait for a canvas or paints made in a factory. Rock faces and caves, a village wall, the floor, a threshold, a palm-leaf, a piece of wood, or even the palm of a hand is space enough. For colours, the infinite hues provided by Nature from flowers, leaves, stones and even cowdung or soot collected from inside a chimney adequately fill the artist's palette. The instinctive urge to honour Nature and avoid polluting it allows people with traditional wisdom to experiment with any natural resource they find around them. Even when they move to chemically produced pigments and consequently brighten their expressions, the images, stories, motifs and local identities remain true to their known cultural understanding.'

- That's the essence of traditional Indian paintings, beautifully summarized by Jaya Jaitly in the book 'Crafting Nature'.

Lifestyles, climate, customs, traditions, natural resources and several other regional and political factors gave birth to various types and styles of paintings in different part of India. Irrespective of the region of origin, most of them are inspired by themes based on religion, nature, customs, epics and folklore.