About Thangka painting.

A thangka is a scroll painting of a Buddha figure. The materials used for this are: finely cotton, gouache or poster paint. Painting a thangka is a very precise process, following a traditional method. Although nowadays you can also design Buddhas on the computer. There are peaceful and wrathful Buddhas. A few examples are the peaceful Tara, Avalokiteshvara, and Mandarava, while wrathful Buddhas include Simhamukha (female), Guru Dragpur, and Rahula. There are many manifestations, which depend on the Tibetan teachers who provide insight into their meaning and visualization. And whether they have a function in Hinayana, Mahayana, or Vajrayana.
Working with these images is in itself a form of meditation. You practice working on their completion with great concentration and commitment. I was introduced to this practice by my cousin Jan, a Buddhist monk, and later teachers such as Andy Weber, Marian van der Horst, Lama Gyurmed, and Tharpen Lintsang. The latter is my current Karma Gardri Styl teacher. He is the son of the famous Gega Lama. Tharpen has rewritten his instruction book in English.
If you would like to know more about thangka painting, lessons, or workshops, please visit Tharpen Lintsang's website: Link teaches in Amsterdam, Brussels, and Huy (Belgium).

She is the yidam through whom any yogin or yogini on the path accomplishes without effort all supreme and common siddhis, and she is very powerful in removing in an instant all the interruptions on the path, such as curses and magic formulas sent by the Eight Classes of gods and spirits and by both human or nonhuman beings.

Her body is dark blue and her lion face is white with a fiercely wrathful expression. As a symbol of eradicating the emotions, the root of samsara, her right hand raises a curved knife, or trigug, with a vajra handle into the sky.

As a symbol of concentrating all the power, capacity, and blessings of the universe in the essence of primordial potentiality, her left hand holds a blood-filled kapala at the heart. As a symbol of the inseparability of method and prajña, she has a khatvanga in the crook of her left arm. As a symbol of manifesting in the total equality in which samsara and nirvana are nondual, her left leg is extended and her right leg is bent in a dance movement while she is standing in a dignified manner on the seat of a lotus, a sun disk, and a corpse. As a symbol of having naturally perfected all the qualities of total wisdom, she has all the ornaments of wrathful female manifestations.

Gouache on cotton canvas

In a dimension of roaring fire and howling wind of wisdom, his body is dark red with a fiercely wrathful expression. To symbolize his command over the Great Secret Vajra, his right hand raises a vajra into the sky. As a symbol of having conquered all the arrogant classes of the universe by means of his power, his left hand squeezes a black, nine-headed scorpion. As a symbol of having completely perfected the power of the wrathful king Supreme Horse Manifestation (Hayagriva), Lord of Lotus Speech, in the midst of his upward-streaming, yellowish, braided hair a green horse head is distinctly neighing. As a symbol of having completely perfected the power of the five families of Garudas, the antidote for taming the powerful Nagas and Tsens of the universe, a Garuda soars above his head and he has wings made of meteorite.

As a symbol of embodying the Vajra of mind of all the ocean of masters, sugatas, vidyadharas, and victorious ones, at the center of his heart, inside a thigle of five-colored light, is a brilliant dark blue syllable HŪM. As a symbol of having completely perfected the power of the Kilaya activity, the lower part of his body is shaped as a pointed triangular dagger. In order to totally tame the great classes of beings of this degenerate age who send provocations of energy, he is standing in a dignified manner with the blazing point of the dagger piercing the heart of a Gyalpo and a Senmo that lie across each other upon a lotus and sun disk.

Gouache on prepared cotton, with details in 24 karat gold

74 x 85 cm with frame

Framed with premium anti-reflective Artglass