Tibetan Monks

“Hasten slowly and ye shall soon arrive.”- Milarepa

I speak neither Tibetan nor Chinese; yet in Tibet I found myself frequently motioned into the humble cells of monks who wished to meet me. We communicated with ease; just the two of us, drinking cups of steaming tea, with a dollop of mildly rancid yak butter added for taste and nutrients. Without witnesses, we quickly established an ephemeral intimacy, trusting and exchanging at the most elemental human level.  We traded postcards and snap-shots;  and I drew their portraits, jotted down quickly with a searching line on beautiful hand-made paper I had purchased from an orphanage in Lhasa – still a useful skill for people on the Himalayan plateau.  I gave most of these drawings to the sitters, but a few made it home with me and they found a second life transformed through drypoint on zinc plates into the images contained here.

The cover illustration is a traditional portrait of Milarepa, the eleventh-century Tibetan saint. This image and the Mandala/Tanka image within, were printed from woodblocks I purchased from a street artisan outside Drepung Monastery in Lhasa. The mandala is printed on paper I brought back from an orphanage on the outskirts of Lhasa.