Mantra mandala by Tashi Gurung: a vermilion disc filled with gold mantra script, ringed by the eight auspicious symbols, coral flowers at the corners
Close detail of Mantra Mandala, Vermilion and Black by Tashi Gurung, showing brushwork in mineral pigment
Detail 1 of Mantra Mandala, Vermilion and Black by Tashi Gurung, Lo Manthang, Nepal
Detail 2 of Mantra Mandala, Vermilion and Black by Tashi Gurung, Lo Manthang, Nepal
Mantra mandala by Tashi Gurung: a vermilion disc filled with gold mantra script, ringed by the eight auspicious symbols, coral flowers at the corners
Close detail of Mantra Mandala, Vermilion and Black by Tashi Gurung, showing brushwork in mineral pigment
Detail 1 of Mantra Mandala, Vermilion and Black by Tashi Gurung, Lo Manthang, Nepal
Detail 2 of Mantra Mandala, Vermilion and Black by Tashi Gurung, Lo Manthang, Nepal
Tashi Gurung

Mantra Mandala, Vermilion and Black

$1,000.00 Save $-1,000.00
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Vermilion on black. The pigment is cinnabar, ground from the stone over three months and bound with yak-hide glue — the same mineral red used in the fifteenth-century wall paintings Tashi Gurung spent years restoring a few streets from where this was painted.

Tashi Gurung lives in Lo Manthang, the walled capital of the former Kingdom of Lo, on Nepal's border with Tibet. He has painted thangkas in the classical Tibetan Buddhist tradition since the 1990s. Read more about Tashi
Technique Dimensions
Hand-painted on cotton cloth with mineral pigments bound in yak-hide glue 27" H, 27" W
Framing From
Wood and non-glare acrylic glass frame, black Lo Manthang, Nepal

Original thangka · Hand-painted

Free US shipping · 30-day returns · Framed

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The artist, the technique, and the story behind Mantra Mandala, Vermilion and Black — prepared personally for this specific work.

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Max Khusid, owner of Art House SF

I'm Max Khusid, the gallery owner. I chose every piece here myself and I answer every question personally: framing, size on your wall, shipping, or the story behind the work.

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Tashi Gurung was a farmer. He grew up in Lo Manthang, the walled capital of the former Kingdom of Lo, closed to outsiders until 1992 — and had no exposure to Tibetan Buddhist painting until he was twenty.

In 1999 he joined the team restoring the five-hundred-year-old murals of the Jampa and Thupchen gompas. The project trained local Loba people rather than importing specialists, and his certificate — signed by the chief conservator and by the King of Mustang — records excellent marks in consolidation, cleaning and retouching. Each winter he travelled to Kathmandu to study painting and iconography under the master thangka painter Mukti Singh Thapa, three months at a time, across five years.

He begins with the cloth: cotton stretched on a wooden frame, sized with yak-hide glue, gessoed with white clay, dried in the sun, then polished with a stone until the surface will take a line. The pigments are ground from semiprecious stones — azurite, malachite, orpiment, cinnabar, lapis lazuli — milled to powder over three months. Some works carry 24-carat gold, and a single thangka can take months.

“In Nepal, no one knows how to do this, so we have to learn,” he told The New York Times in 2013 — the only painter quoted among a team of thirty-five.

Read Tashi’s full story — the four-day ride to Lo Manthang, and the murals that taught him to paint.

Tashi Gurung portrait

Virtual Exhibit

Learn more about Mustang Kingdom, the Thangka process, ancient Buddhist monasteries, the meaning behind individual thangkas, the mineral pigments used, and hear Tashi talk about his journey.

Learn More

My visit to Nepal

In 2018, I visited Nepal and Tashi's home, Upper Mustang. To get to Mustang, we flew into a mountain airport and set out in a caravan on a 10-day journey. After 4 days in the saddle, I met Tashi Gurung.

see the video

Tashi's Story

Listen to Tashi explaining how he got into Thangka and Mandala painting. His story from a farmer to a Thangka Master, and the role the American Himalayan Foundation and Diane Feinstein's late husband played.

Listen to his story

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