First post of the new year is an illustration from the Ramayana: where Sita, wife of Rama meets the golden deer in the forest. This deer is pure evil and is designed to lure her away from the safety of her cottage and the magic circle of protection around it, so that the demon king Ravana can abduct her while her husband is away looking for the exact same deer... anyway I think that's the story.
I grew up with a Balinese statue of this where the woman and the deer were carved from the same piece of wood and she was almost kissing it. I don't know what happened to this statue. I think we didn't ship it to America.
My dad is getting a print of this for his (Chinese?) New Year's present, but he totally has no idea.
