Nirupa Rao

After an inspirational trip to the new National Gallery in Singapore, I had a renewed interest in Chinese ink painting. I lived in Singapore for two years when I was in school, and we studied about the original ‘Nanyang’ artists who attempted to forge a national identity for their young country through painting. A lot of them came from mainland China or Malaysia, and they experimented with the traditional content of Chinese ink painting to create something they could call uniquely ‘Singaporean’. 

I painted a series of botanicals for my wedding stationery (in December, 2015). Each symbolised a particular event — if you’re at all familiar with Indian weddings, they’re made up of day after day of festivities. 

My husband’s family is Hindu and mine is Christian, so we had both ceremonies in Bangalore, plus a pre-wedding weekend for close friends in Sri Lanka. The cards were horizontal format, but I’ve adapted them for the Tumbler feed. You can also see our envelope, which I hand-painted and then printed on leather-effect paper.

01 Ceylon Ironwood (Mesua ferrea): The national tree of Sri Lanka, native to wet, tropical parts of Sri Lanka, India, southern Nepal, Burma,Thailand, Indochina, the Philippines, Malaysia and Sumatra. It’s foliage is a beautiful pinkish red when young. It generally flowers during the dry season, and produces new leaves just after flowering, at the start of the rainy season, so the occurrence of flowers and red leaves together is pretty rare — but correct me if I’m wrong. 

02 Marigold with Jasmine (Tagetes patula with Jasminum sambac): Marigolds and jasmines are used in south Asia to make garlands, so they are very strongly associated with weddings. You can just about see the jasmines in my hair.

Painted this tiny little sprig of bougainvillea that I picked up on one of my walks around the neighbourhood. What we generally presume to be the flower of this plant is actually a colourful leaf bract. The actual flowers are the tiny white cluster of three in the centre.