The Rabsel Thangka Studio

The Rabsel Thangka Studio (previously known as Tsering Thangka Studio Darjeeling) consists of expert graduate artists from the Tsering Art School who have been trained in the Karma Gadri tradition of thangka painting. 

 

The studio was first established in Darjeeling, India in May 2005 for the purpose of fulfilling a series Thangkas for Shechen Monastery, known as the Kyabje Thangka Project. These include never-before painted images of the terma cycle of practices that were revealed by the great enlightened master H.H. Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche (1910-1991). This project consists of roughly 30 very large and elaborate thangkas, 11 painted mandalas and a set of accompanying ‘tsaglis’ (small painted initiation cards) from Khyentse Rinpoche’s terma and other terma traditions. These paintings are all being carefully overseen by the school principal and master thangka painter, Konchog Lhadrepa, who is also doing the underlying drawings. 

 

After moving back to Shechen Monastery from Darjeeling, the new studio was renamed the “Rabsel Thangka Studio” and was officially opened in an auspicious ceremony by Dilgo Khyentse Yangsi Rinpoche, Urgyen Tenzin Jigme Lhundrup, on 24th May 2011. 

 

The Kyabje Thangka Project would not have been possible without the generous sponsorship of The Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation (SDRF), a family foundation based in New York City that began operation in 1995, which has “…a longstanding commitment to the promotion and celebration of Himalayan art”. Images from the school and Shechen Archives are also published on the website run by the foundation: www.himalayanart.org

 

Once the Kyabje Thangka Project is complete, the studio artists will be able to fulfil commissions from the Himalayan region and around the world.