By MARTIN J. KIDSTON
BASIN — Tseten Dorjee sat by a tall window, his legs crossed and his face held inches away from a painting already splashed with color.
After a train ride from New York to Montana — to say nothing of events in New Delhi — one would think Dorjee and his peers would prefer the comfort of a chair or a couch over the rigors of a cushion, upon which they sit and paint while holding the vajra meditative posture.
The three thangka artists, exiled from Tibet, settled in early July into a rustic downtown building here in Basin in, home of the Montana Artists Refuge.
The three were brought to demonstrate their thangka skills by the refuge, as well as the Feathered Pipe Foundation and the Tibetan Children’s Education Foundation, headquartered in Helena.
In simple terms, thangka art depicts various aspects of Buddhist cosmology in pictorial form. Up the highway, their work adorns the walls of the Holter Museum of Art. But here in Basin their spiritual workings come as a surprising delight to those who venture into the heart of this small mining town not expecting to find three Buddhist artists.
Dorjee held his posture and smiled. The people in New York don’t smile enough, he said, while those in Montana grin as they talk. On the floor next to him his brushes, cloths and paints sit in no particular order.
“This is Avaloki Desawara,” he said of the image taking shape on his canvas. “He represents the god of compassion. The Dali Lama — you know of him? He is incarnated from this god.”
One of Dorjee’s many jars contains ground gold. Another holds the dark blue powder of lapis. As needed, the powder is mixed with glue and water. When it dries, it maintains a fine, brilliant hue.
Making such powder takes time. The gold was ground in Nepal while the lapis, Dorjee said, took him and peers nine days to crush and grind to the consistency of baby powder. This way the color lasts longer.
“It gives you good feelings when you keep it for a long time,” Dorjee said pulling his brush away from his canvas. “When you put precious things into a painting it makes you happy.”
The three artists are seated along different walls of the room. They paint in absolute silence upon a cotton cloth stretched between bamboo rods and a wooden frame.
Even the process of preparing the cloth is labor intensive; it’s washed, rubbed, and dried as many as seven times per side. The approach, verging on spiritual meditation, becomes as much a part of the painting as the paint itself.
“You work the cloth until it becomes like paper,” Dorjee said. “Then you begin the pencil drawings. The most important part of the work is the measurements.”
Demonstrating the importance of precision, Gyurme Sonam stepped close to an 8-foot-tall work in progress. The image of Buddha appeared in black ink over a whitewashed background. The lines and measurements are still visible in portions of the work, each applied with a greater goal in mind.
The application of the ink is a practiced skill. The brush allowed Sonam to adjust the width of his soft black lines by simply regulating the pressure he applied to the instrument.
“Hold it like this,” Sonam demonstrated, taking the brush between two fingers as if carefully picking an ant off a kitchen floor. “Hold it soft like this.”
A thin piece of plastic rested under Sonam’s palm. It allowed his hand to glide freely over the picture he meticulously created line by line. He set the patterns down in single, fluid strokes of his arm without pausing or rushing ahead.
Across the room, working by the natural morning light, Ngawang Chophel from Dahramsala applied the colorful details to his own rendition of Guru Rinpoche, the tantric master who brought Buddhism to Tibet.
Earlier this morning, Chophel enjoyed a toasted banana and butter sandwich with a cup of chai tea. His tea had gone cold and the crust of his bread had hardened in a nearby dish. Chophel’s focus now narrowed on his work as if nothing else existed.
“You think about the clouds when you paint the clouds,” he said. “You think about the flower when you paint the flowers. These are the rays of the human being.”
Dorjee explained how the work is strongly connected with to Buddhist theology. The art celebrates the connection between all sentient beings and it’s naturally linked with Dorjee’s own spiritual beliefs.
“If someone died in our family, we would paint for them to achieve a better life,” he said. “We believe they can go on to a better life.”
After being denied their visa by a U.S. Customs worker in New Delhi (he actually suggested they go to Calcutta instead, according to Dorjee), the three artists have made themselves at home here in Basin.
They compare Montana to Tibet and say the people are kind and cordial like they were back home. They saw their first deer on the way to Basin.
“It’s totally different from New York City,” Dorjee said. “We really like it. It’s so wonderful to see and it’s real peaceful here.”
