Design Inspiration:
The paintings is based on the bubble and cloud, which symbolize impermanence, as the bubble is bound to pop and the cloud is bound to shift. The roundness of the bubbles also symbolize the precious gem of different colors, which you find in almost every Tibetan painting. For me, the flatness of the bubbles make it so it can be up to interpretation, it can represent a bubble or a gem. Since I started contemporary painting based on traditional Tibetan painting, all my clouds are improvised and not a single cloud is drawn the same way. The cloud symbolizes the beauty of impermanence, because clouds do not stay the same in the sky but constantly change, they symbolize emptiness in a contemporary art form. All my colors are natural pigments, gold, indigo, natural dye, shellac.
Pema Rinzin
Born in Tibet in 1966, Pema Rinzin grew up in Dharamsala, India where he trained with master Thangka painters from 1979 to 1983. Rinzin was the first Tibetan artist in residence at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York. His contemporary style art gained prominence after his work was exhibited in the Rubin Museum.
In 2007 Rinzin founded the New York Tibetan Art Studio (NYTAS), the only school in New York committed to teaching and preserving the classical art of Thangka painting. NYTAS has received recognition from Tibet House US and the Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala as an institution preserving Tibetan culture.