The Stranger

I'm not going to hold back: this is the best painting exhibit that has ever appeared in Seattle. It is not just an ethnographic or anthropological exhibit; these painters are not primitives discovered by white people and put on display; they are fully modern contemporary artists, and the work here is ASTOUNDING by the standards of Western gallery painting. Dorothy Napangardi, Gloria, Kathleen and Violet Petyarre, Abie Loy Kemarre, Emily Kame Kngwarreye -- mostly women, mostly Western Desert artists -- have been producing just in the past decade the most heartstopping paintings created ANYWHERE in the past fifty years. If you miss this you will have missed a great, great thing.

Be sure and stop in the old permanent gallery space downstairs, where two of the best masterpieces are displayed -- an incredible huge "Sandhills of Mina Mina" by Dorothy Napangardi, much denser than her usual work, with seams of color, and a searing "Women's Ceremony" by Abie Loy. Good lord, this is good stuff.