By Lona O’Connor
FORT LAUDERDALE — During most of his 20-year career, Lama Pema Tenzin painted delicately detailed small watercolors, a little bigger than a man’s pocket handkerchief.
Now he finds himself wielding wide household-size paintbrushes of latex paint on a canvas so gigantic that it covers the floor of a big gallery at the Museum of Art/Fort Lauderdale.
The 50-foot tall painting of a standing Buddha is for a very special occasion.
It will hang behind the throne where the 14th Dalai Lama will sit on his visit to South Florida Sept. 19-21.
The ritualized style of painting is called a thangka. The thangka that Tenzin paints for the Dalai Lama’s visit is thought to be the largest one ever created in the United States. It is only the third one that size that Tenzin has made.
Tenzin, 40, who lives in San Rafael, Calif., was assisted by his apprentice, Serena Bartlett, 21, a San Francisco student, and a few local painters, including Jackie Downey, a Boca Raton art teacher and Buddhist.
Thangka painting couldn’t be less like the western idea of the painter as individualist.
Thangkas are put together in a strict ritualized fashion, right down to the proportion of the Buddha’s body. Every color, every hand gesture, every drape of his clothing has significance to those schooled in Buddhist philosophy.
Born in a monastery headed by his father in Bhutan, which is near Tibet in the Himalayas, Tenzin began studying there as a child.
Bartlett and Downey spend hours a day on their knees working on small sections of the enormous canvas, prayer beads wrapped around their wrists. They recite prayers and mantras as they work.
Tenzin mixes colors, oversees their work, and paints, too. Periodically, he paces around the painting in his yellow and maroon priestly robes, humming to himself and adding flourishes.
Downey retired in June from teaching art at Piper High School in Sunrise. She does not complain about the long hours of bending over her work, laying on several base coats, then shading background colors from dark to light in gradations so subtle they have to be pointed out to be seen.
“It’s a very precious gift, dedicated to His Holiness,” she said. “It’s so beautiful.”
The lama and his assistants started painting in late July and expect to be finished by the end of the month.
Tenzin is also in charge of decorating a throne made of purple heartwood, on which the Dalai Lama will sit during his visit.
They can be observed at work on the thangka during regular museum hours through Aug. 29.
