In 2018 the artist Katharina Schanderl made a short trip to Nepal. She immediately discovered her love for Nepal and thangka art. So she started to study the Hindu and Buddhist religions. In 2021, she traveled to Nepal for 9 months to experience and learn thangka painting from a thangka master. The fascinating aspect of Thangka painting is the spiritual background. In each Thangka painting lives the spirit of the depicted deity.

She first had to deal with the spiritual aspect of thangka painting to gain the appropriate mental attitude. Books about the life of Buddha and the common Hindu gods are required reading. Months have passed, in which she had to deal additionally with old books and sketches of Thangka masters to understand the proportions and units of measurement of the gods. The central element of all proportions is the eye. 

Only then she was allowed to paint a thangka herself from start to finish, from sketch to shading. And only after her teacher approved this thangka she could work on the great thangkas of the masters.

This image is available in full and cropped portions as NFT on opensea.io.

The Wheel of Life or "Bhavacakra" is well known to Buddhist monks as a powerful meditation tool and also to students as a means of learning and understanding the teachings of the Buddha.  The wheel represents the causes of suffering of our mortal form, through both horrific and sublime imagery, and can be seen on the walls of many Tibetan Buddhist monasteries throughout the Himalayan regions. Basically, it is a metaphysical diagram consisting of four concentric circles held with a firm grip by Yama, the Lord of Death. The sky above the wheel with the clouds or stars is a symbol of freedom from cyclical existence or samsara, and Buddha pointing to it signifies that liberation is possible. In the center of the wheel are three animals symbolizing the "Three Poisons": Ignorance (the pig), Attachment (the bird) and Anger (the snake).