Painting, according to some scholars is as old as Orissa's sculpture. In fact profession-wise, there was originally no distinction between painting and sculpture. The Chitrakars or artists were commissioned by their patrons in all visual arts of their times. To some extent the ancient wall plasters inside the Jagannath temple complex and in the temple of Mukteshwara seem to bear out this view. Hence the three main categories of Orissan painting, the Bhitichitra or the murals, the pata or the cloth painting and the Talpatachitra or the palm leaf engraving remain more or less the same in style and subject-matter during any given period of Orissan history.

The colours of all Orissan Paintings are vivid and contrasting, with red, ochre, indigo, green, black and white being used traditionally. Each outline is clearly and strongly defined. The paintings concentrate on sculpture like figures of simple shapes and monotonous postures and expression. There is no perspective or background detail, the background is generally either just painted in a contrasting colour or filled in with flowers and tendrils.

  The subject matter of all these paintings is of Vaishnava origin Jagannath, the main manifestation of Vishnu in Orissan lore is the main source of inspiration. However, the rise of the Bhakti movement in the 15th century saw a period of Renaissance that accentuated the adoration of Krishna. This devotion stimulated all the art forms of the State. The rediscovery of Jayadeva's Gita-Govinda too added a new theme to Orissan art. From this period onward, we find a large scale visualization mythology and folklore, including the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the Bhagavatagita, the Shakta, apart from more traditional Radha-Krishna and Jagannath, Balabhadra, Subhadra themes.

The Patachitras are paintings on cloth. In the absence of paper, cloth gives an extended smooth surface and is easily transported. For the patachitra, small strips of cloth are prepared for the painting by a coating of a mixture of glue and chalk which result in a leathery finish. The outlines are then drawn directly in red or yellow and the other colours subsequently filled in. Finally the pata is given a lacquer coating to protect it from climatic effects. For this process of varnishing and glazing, the back of the painting is exposed to heat while the top is being brushed with a fine layer of lacquer.

Even today the Chitrakars of Orissa use vegetable and mineral colours. A prillient and permanent white is obtained by powdering, boiling, and filtering conch shells. Red comes from Hingula, mineral colour - a stone ingredient. Haritala, is processed to get yellow. Ramaraja, a kind of indigo, provides the blue. Black is made from either lamp-black or burnt coconut shells. Brushes are very crude and are made from the hair of domestic animals.

The Talapatrachitras or the palm leaf engravings consist of frozen linear drawing as illustrations of manuscripts. In these engravings, colours are muted and play a very minor part. Where colours are at all applied, they are just painted either to emphasize the inscriptions, or to fill up blank space. In Orissa, manuscripts were written on palm leaves even during the Mughal period when the paper was freely available. In the limited space of the oblong palm leaf with a small width, human figures completed with details of hair style and dress, animals, flowers and trees are executed with great precision and beauty, the tool of this art is a sharp style and it needs a remarkably steady hand to be able to wield this tool on thin strip of leaf. These talapatachitras have an affinity with the Rajasthani miniatures both in the treatment, composition and the colour scheme.

Apart from these three most important pictorial genres, there is a lot of folk art in Orissa. One of the most popular done on circular playing cards peculiar to Orissa. These are called Ganjapas and have elaborate borders with the central illustration from either the Ramayana or the Dasavatara of Vishnu or from 'Krishnalila'.

Even though there is a marked difference in quality and conception in the new illustrated palm-leaf etchings and pata-chitra paintings, and the sixteenth and seventeenth century examples in the Orissa State Museum, or the work of contemporary applique artists in Pipli and the fragments of century old work which some of the older artists retain as precious heirlooms, the painters and palm-leaf etchers of villages such as Raghurajpur still create remarkably lively and highly-skilled work.

Throughout the world, traditional art forms have vanished, leaving behind nothing but their rapidly dimming memories in museum galleries. What makes Orissa an extremely unusual place is that she has managed to preserve a significant measure of her artistic heritage, and that amongst her huge number of skilled craftsmen, there still exist a good proportion of artists of true genius. Many of their forms are changing and developing, but all are exuberantly, and often beautifully alive.