A painting you use, not only look at
Thangkas are painted to support practice. A practitioner visualises the deity in front of them, and the painting holds the correct form — proportion, colour, mudra, attribute — so that visualisation stays true. This is why iconometry precedes artistry in every stage of the work.
Materials that outlive the painter
Cotton canvas, hide glue, chalk gesso, mineral pigments ground from lapis lazuli, malachite, cinnabar and orpiment, and 24k gold burnished with agate. Nothing synthetic. Colours settled six centuries ago in Tibetan monasteries still read true today.
Thangka and Paubha
Paubha is the Newar tradition of the Kathmandu Valley and the older ancestor of the Tibetan thangka: denser, more jewelled, with no empty ground. Our studio paints both lineages.