When the gods poke their heads out of the clouds and wave their arms around in excitement, something big must be going on down on planet Earth. In this case, it’s not a soccer game they’re watching but a demon-busting battle from the Ramayana, part of a new show at Seattle Asian Art Museum.
 
Many Arrows from Rama’s Bow: Paintings of the Ramayana illustrates the epic story of Rama’s Journey, a sacred text honoring the god Vishnu. It has been told in India for more than 2,000 years and illustrated countless times, often with such sophisticated compositions, luscious color, and exquisite technique that the work can bring you to your knees. A selection of 44 of those images from the 16th through the 20th centuries makes up this exhibition, which opened last week. The story is juicy stuff, full of supernatural encounters, monkey armies, and off-with-their-heads bravado , and—lucky us!—we’ll have a chance to see the story enacted when ACT opens its production of Ramayana October 12.
 
Many Arrows fills just one gallery at SAAM and can’t be compared to the grand scale of Garden and Cosmos, the knockout show of Indian paintings a few years ago that brought crowds streaming through the museum, many for repeat viewings. But it offers a taste of the things that make Indian painting so irresistible: spectacular gardens, courageous heroes, lots of battles and blood, and a dreamlike way of conflating space and time so we can witness several events at once. Nowhere are voluptuous beauties more ripe and alluring than in Hindu paintings—and where else can you find demons that are simultaneously scary and adorable?
  

Back at home, Kanya places rice in a pattern, 1975-1985, pigment on paper, 30 x 22 in. " data-image-selection='{"width":527,"height":380,"x1":0,"y1":0,"x2":527,"y2":380}'>

     
The classical style of Many Arrows is complemented by a show of modern women’s paintings from India’s Mithila region: home of Sita, the mythical heroine of the Ramayana and consort to hero-god Rama. Intricate, highly patterned and painted in unmixed primary colors, these images in some ways resemble embroidery or needlework. In another way, they're closer to the Australian aboriginal art that was recently on display at SAM downtown. Both are new artforms that were introduced as a way of helping poor villages grow economically. In this case, during a severe drought in the 1960s, women of the region (where there was a long tradition of decorative wall-painting) were given paper and encouraged to make pictures to sell. Some of those women blossomed into nationally, and even internationally known artists, bringing honor and income to their villages—and delight to art lovers.

Many Arrows from Rama’s Bow: Paintings of the Ramayana
Women’s Paintings from the Land of Sita
Thru Dec 2, Seattle Asian Art Museum, $5–$7, children are free