Hindu women who live in villages near the market town of Madhubani in northern India maintain old traditions and teach them to their daughters. Painting is one of the traditional skills that are passed down from generation to generation in the families of some of the women. They paint figures from nature and myth on household and village walls to mark the seasonal festivals of the religious year, for special events of the life cycle, and when marriages are being arranged they prepare intricately designed wedding proposals. But even though women in the villages around Madhubani have been practicing their folk art, for centuries, the world at large has come to know about these women and to consider them to be "artists" only in the last thirty years. Even… Click here to read more