Ramayana

It appears that painting the story of Ramayana was pre-ordained. These paintings serve to illumine the text of Ram Varma’s modern epic, “Before he was God: Ramayana, Reconsidered, Recreated, published by Rupa. Ram Varma has shunned all the embellishments and myths of the original Puranic version and given Ram’s life and times a touch of reality. He has tried to prove the historicity of the story that has captured the imagination of the continent for ages. Vandana’s paintings also lend an air of fresh air to the saga. Much has been painted on the subject as is written. The illustrations have been mostly done in traditional folk motifs or in the ‘Amar Chitra Katha’ mode, where little is left to the imagination of the reader.

Vandana Sehgal endeavours to give a new genre that retains the mystical quality of the saga and yet illumine the episode, the ambience and the times of the story. Needless to say, her works exhibit her preoccupation with spaces, whether physical or metaphysical. These spaces are in between the sacred and the profane, the clamour and the silence, the light and the dark, and are the prime receptacle for the story of Rama.

This series that comprises of 66 paintings, is inspired from the text of Ram Varma, which is written in free verse. This text was one of the layers of the palimpsest that has given the framework for the whole work. Through this primary layer, the impressions that have been part of Vandana’s psyche and work have overlapped to give the final expression in Oil on canvas. These canvases are 29cm X 21cm size.