Tibetan Thangka
This extraordinarily colorful thangka (a painting on cloth that can be rolled up, like a scroll) is part of an ancient tradition of Buddhist art (originating in the 11th c.) that serves to support meditation and is used as a teaching tool for followers of Buddhism. This thangka depicts a central deity surrounded by 10 vignettes (or manifestations/ or reincarnations of one another featuring other individual 14 Bodhisattva--or enlightened beings, including 2 wrathful deities seen with fierce expressions in the lower corners that have the power to ward off evil spirits and negative energy) that have all been painted in a symmetrical fashion around the central deity. Wearing a gold and jeweled crown and large earrings, the central enlightened deity sits on a throne and is surrounded by colorful and stylized clouds, water, landscape, lotus flowers, trees, luxurious flowing silky fabrics, conch shells, and more. Thangkas are consecrated paintings--which means that the deity inhabits the central figure who in this case might be Guru Padmasambhava (also called Guru Rinpoche) who was a tantric Buddhist Vajra master from medieval India.

Mounted and framed (but with no glass).
22" x 29". framed: 25" x 31"