Kerala, popularly called the Godís own country, has a rich tradition of ancient murals. Just as the paintings of Ajanta are considered unique for their colour and form, the murals of Kerala stand out for their emphasis on beauty, clarity and symmetry. These predominantly depict religious and mystic themes.
No doubt, the process is energized by the passions of a people rich in imaginative power, who extended the legends inherited by them through vivacious imagery, which overwhelm space. The walls of the temples were painted in large-scale adumbrations of the legends of gods in vivid colours as if to offset the greens of the earth.
The compositions are strictly governed by factors such as proportion, pose, background etc. For instance the face is to be divided into three sections, the neck is to be one-fourth of the face, the length of the chest is to be equal to that of the face and so on. There are also broad principles for the depiction of the yes expressing different emotions. Similarly the visualizations of animals, fish, temples, markets etc are governed by distinct principles and rules.
The colour symbolism generally follows the permutations of the psychological qualities of embodied in the quasi-scientific philosophical systems of the gunas the triple division of all reality with satva or balanced, pure, divine; rajas or active, dynamic, irascible; and tamas or inert, impure, base. The colour symbolism of the triad is traditionally green for satvic, red and a mixture of red and yellows for the rajasic and black (Shivite) and White (Vaishanavite) for the tamasic deities. Saffron-red is the most predominant colour of the Kerala murals.
Herbal vegetable dyes, fruit juices, minerals and chemicals extracted from the earth, stones, root, and such natural materials are used for making the paint. Brushes for painting on the wall are made of the blades of certain types of grass and the roots of some trees. Sharpened bamboo pieces are used to draw the outlines of the murals.
Altogether, Kerala style of Mural painting with its emphasis on dramatic scene elaborate costume and memorable gestures of figure in intimate relation with each other, would seem to be parallel to the living performing art Kathakali, Koodiyattom and other forms of theatre of imagination. They for the corpus of a distinctive school of painting evolved by masters of pictorial form who could recreate vitalities of conflict, the frenzy of the gods, the grace of the goddesses, the ecstasy of love, the agony of separation and the joy of reunion in the grand manner of the great Indian tradition of wall paintings.