Welcome to Tibetan Art
Welcome to tibetanart.com - the website of the British artist, author and scholar Robert Beer, who has studied and practiced Tibetan Art for the past forty years. In recent years he has worked closely with the finest Newar artists and Tibetan thangka painters of the Kathmandu Valley to assemble a unique and extensive collection of the finest contemporary Tibetan and Newar paintings of Buddhist and Hindu deities.
The main purpose of this site is to display the incredible skills of these individual artists by making many of their original paintings available as fine-art Giclee Prints, all of which are meticulously accurate in their iconography and detail. Each painting has a detailed description written by Robert Beer, who is working in association with Wisdom Books to produce these archival prints. Also exhibited on this website are some of the the exquisite visionary paintings and mandalas of John Miles. So essentially it is the artists themselves who are represented here, for they are truly some of the most visionary, innovative and divinely inspired painters of our time.
News from tibetanart.com
Kathmandu - November 2011
Much has changed in the world of Newar art since I was last in Kathmandu twenty months previously. The works of the finest painters are now in great demand, with some wealthy collectors, investors and art lovers in Nepal now seeking to acquire or accumulate their paintings. But given the amount of time needed to produce such masterpieces, this has led to a scarcity of available paintings and a great increase in the prices that individual artist’s can now command for their new works. All of this is good news for me, as I can no longer afford to collect and patronize Newar art like I have done for the past sixteen years.
More information regarding Giclee Prints
It is now just over a year since we launched this website, and the response to its imagery, content and textual information has been extremely positive, for it is truly a unique site. Recently we have added the full range of my silk-screen prints and sixteen new Giclee Prints to the site, and here I would like to explain a little more about the spiritual, artistic and aesthetic value of these beautiful prints...
Featured Art
Bardo Mandala of Peaceful and Wrathful Deities
This thangka depicts the assembly of the forty-two ‘peaceful’ (zhi) and fifty-eight ‘wrathful’ (khro) deities that constitute the Hundred Peaceful and Wrathful Deities of the Zhitro (zhi-khro) or Bardo Mandala. These deities are precisely described in the well-known text of the Bardo Thodol or ‘Tibetan Book of the Dead’, as they sequentially arise from the heart, throat and crown chakras during the forty-nine day period of the ‘intermediate state’ (bardo) that occurs between death and rebirth.
Artist : Dorje Tamang
Price From : £115.00
Padmasambhava And His Eight Manifestations
This gold on vermilion thangka was painted by Sunlal Ratna Tamang in 2005, and depicts Padmakara (Padmasambhava), the ‘lotus-born’, as the central figure of a composition known as ‘The Guru’s Eight Manifestations’ (Tib. Guru Tsen-gye), which belongs to the Nyingma ‘revealed treasures’ or terma traditions.
Artist : Sunlal Ratna Tamang
Price From : £65.00
Mahottara Heruka
This powerful thangka of Mahottara Heruka (Tib. Chemchog Heruka), meaning the ‘Great Supreme heruka’, was painted by Chewang Dorje in 2003. Mahottara is the lord of all the wrathful ‘blood-drinking’ (heruka) deities, and the unified source of emanation for the hundred peaceful and wrathful deities of the zhitro or bardo mandala. As the ‘unified source of emanation’ he is the wrathful dharmakaya aspect of the blue primordial Buddha, Samantabhadra (Tib. Kuntuzangpo), who appears in union with the wrathful aspect of his white consort, Samantabhadri. Their sexual union (kunzang yab-yum) represents the union of pure appearance and emptiness.
Artist : Chewang Dorje
Price From : £65.00
The Gentle Pulse of Nature
This undated and unsigned mandala was painted in the late 1980’s on the raw and unprimed Irish linen canvas that John always used, and the corners of this five-foot square canvas are empty. The soft interior of the outer halo is sprayed with areas of blue aniline dye, with nebulous spiral structures emerging from the edge of inner mandala with its countless calligraphic spiral and coiling structures. The heart of this mandala emerges from a luminous spiral nebula of stellar forms, and the whole composition has a soft feminine quality that mirrors the gentle pulse of Mother Nature in her most benign and nourishing aspect.
Artist : John F B Miles
Price From : £65.00