Tashi has trained and painted for over 20 years. From 2006-2010, he was the artist-in-residence at the Ganden Monastery in Dharamsala. He is both a master thangka painter and craftsman — painting and decorating statues both for the Monastery and private customers. He currently lives in Sonoma (CA).
Tashi has traveled throughout India to work in monasteries to restore and decorate statues and has been integral in the Tibetan art community. He studied under the late Ven. Sangye Yeshi, who reactivated the long and rich tradition of thangka painting in Dharamsala by opening a school at the Tibetan Library of Works and Archives. When this first school was shut, due to restructuring of the Library buildings, Tashi worked with his teacher to start the Institute of Tibetan Thangka Art. Through his initiative, the ITTA was started, and staffed with the best teachers.
Tashi has shown his works along with his ITTA contemporaries at the Tibet House in New Delhi, at the Museum at His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s temple in Dharamsala, and at the Tibet House in New York. His thangka were featured art on TLC’s series New York Ink (placed with Sheppard Fairey’s Obey art), at the Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art, Tubac Center for the Arts where it received Honorable Mention in a juried group exhibition, as well as at Invisible NYC Gallery in New York’s Lower East Side.
Tashi’s thangka have been auctioned by Christie’s to benefit the Tibet House; he has also donated works and lessons to benefit the Tibetan Aid Project and the Tibet Fund, who showcased his work in their PSA on the Jumbotron in New York’s Times Square. He has taught classes at the Tibet House, the Newark Museum, as well as to private groups, and has completed murals for Jivamukti Yoga in New York.
From 2013-2018, Tashi set up a special nonprofit gallery and studio in Sebastopol, CA to showcase his work; the studio was home to a massive thangka, known as thanbhochi — Tashi was the first Tibetan to paint a piece of this scale outside of Tibet. The thanbhochi was donated to the Dalai Lama and Namgyal Monastery in Bodh Gaya, India. It now hangs behind His Holiness at his annual end-of-year teachings in Bihar.
LEARN MORE at www.PreserveTibetanArt.org.