Mexican Bark Bird Painting.

Mexican bark painting is a folk art in which artists use bright colors to paint scenes of everyday village life, colorful birds, flowers and other animals on paper made from bark. The art form is also used to illustrate scenes from traditional fables and stories.  Bark paper or papal amate, is produced by hand using bark from the mulberry or fig trees. The bark is washed, boiled and laid in lines on a wooden board. The fibers are then beaten with stone until they fuse together. When synthetic pigments/paints were introduced into rural areas in Mexico in the 1950’s, artists fell in love with the bright colors, which produce amazing contrast against the bark paper.