Pashupati Lama
Founder & Master Painter
Trained from the age of eleven in Boudha, Pashupati has painted commissioned thangkas for monasteries in Nepal, Bhutan and Ladakh. He teaches the Kalachakra mandala personally.
32 years at the bench
Our Story
A studio, and a school
We are not a gallery that buys in paintings. Everything hanging here was made at these benches, by people we trained.
Boudha, Kathmandu
Thirty-two years at the same benches
Gauri Shankar began as one painter and one apprentice in a room behind the stupa. It is now twelve painters and a school — but the working day is unchanged: pigment ground in the morning, line work in the flat light, gold in the late afternoon.
We keep the traditions separate rather than blending them. A Menri painting is Menri all the way through; a Newari paubha follows the Valley's own conventions. Students learn which lineage they are working in before they learn to make it pretty.
The Painters
Who is at the bench
Dolma Sherpa
Senior Painter, Menri Style
Dolma specialises in Tara and dakini forms and leads the intermediate colour and shading programme at the school.
18 years at the bench
Tenzin Gurung
Painter & Pigment Master
Tenzin grinds and binds every mineral pigment used in the studio, from Badakhshan lapis to Nepali malachite.
14 years at the bench
Milestones
How we got here
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1994
Pashupati Lama opens a two-bench studio behind Boudhanath stupa.
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2003
The first students are taken on; teaching becomes half the work.
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2011
A Kalachakra mandala is commissioned for a monastery in Ladakh.
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2019
The school formalises three levels and a pigment workshop.
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2026
Twelve painters, 120 alumni, and the same eight stages.