There are a lot of murals around town. Many properties -- from parks to colleges to industrial buildings -- have multi block-long walls and the blank canvas is too tempting to leave empty. Graffiti doesn't cover the walls -- more like disciplined paintings on a specific theme. We showed you some landscape themes last month. We'll present more themes later, but for today's posting, we'll concentrate on politicians.
Tamil Nadu elections were held in April and little lawn signs and bumper stickers weren't going to cut it. Why waste money on machine-made banners, when an army of painters is standing by? The below images were all painted by hand, no silkscreen, stick on, lithograph shortcut.
The woman on the left is J. Jayalalithaa, now serving in her third non-consecutive term as Tamil Nadu Chief Minister. She's a colorful and beloved politician known as "Amma" or "mother," by her fans. She was a well-known Tamil movie actress in the 1960s and 70s -- she looked a bit like an Indian Elizabeth Taylor -- whose leading man got her into politics. We didn't know Jesse Jackson was running for office in India. Actually, that's MK Stalin, treasurer of the opposition DMK party.
Sometimes your platform is spun as an action figure or maybe you need a lot of copy to get your point across.
Smiles always sell. On the right, a curious combo of Oscar Wilde, Little Richard? Maybe a wisp of romance also gets votes.
Maybe you're Joe-Cool Emir with your gold scarf and shades. OK, that's Dr. Kalaignar Karunanidhi -- a DMK founder and former Tamil Nadu chief minister.
Or maybe you'd better vote for me because you don't want me to come back all angry in my Hulk persona.
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