Bodhisattvas and Bart Simpson: All about Tsherin Sherpa and his work | Honolulu Museum of Art To the cookie settings To the main content To the footer Story Fri Apr 17 2026 Bodhisattvas and Bart Simpson: All about Tsherin Sherpa and his work Speaking via Zoom from his home in Kathmandu, artist Tsherin Sherpa shares stories of his evolution from traditional thangka painter creating Buddhist art for monasteries to being the first artist to represent Nepal at the Venice Biennale. His voice is sonorous and lilting, and Sherpa is quick to laugh—reflecting the playful, witty elements in his artwork that will be on view in the HoMA exhibition Divine Disruption: The Art of Tsherin Sherpa , opening May 30. As an eight year old in 1970s Kathmandu, Sherpa adeptly copied posters of fruits and birds popular at the time. His Tibetan father, Urgen Dorje, a master of the ancient art of thangka—the meticulously painted, highly stylized vertical scrolls depicting Buddhism’s stories of buddhas, bodhisattvas, and teachers—saw the makings of an apprentice. “I was not doing well in school,” says Sherpa with a smile. “It was more like a safety net, I could earn a living as an artist in case I didn’t finish.” So at the age of 12 he began the rigorous training of thangka painting under his father. According to Sherpa, it takes five years to learn the basics, then the honing of skills begins. It took three months just to learn how to draw the head of Buddha. “You draw features like this over and over until they become second nature,” explains Sherpa, and they are done on a grid ensuring precise, accurate renderings of Buddhist deities. Growing up in Boudha, on the outskirts of Kathmandu, Sherpa lived near the Ka-Nying Shedrub Ling monastery, where he was allowed to join classes to learn scriptures, symbolism, and prayers alongside young monks. At the same time, Sherpa was also immersed in comic book culture. “In India they published comic books of Hindu mythology, like the Ramayama,” he says. “I saw these religious figures with bubble speech and found it fascinating. I also related to the two-dimensional style.” Then at 17, he earned a scholarship to study computer science in Taiwan, where he spent three years. “I was just a teenager and [the apprenticeship] was overwhelming and I needed to escape,” says Sherpa. He wasn’t particularly interested in things like coding, but it got him out of Nepal. “It was like a college experience for me.” Sherpa returned to Nepal to continue his art path, assisting his father in painting monastery murals and thangkas for eight years. But his time in Taiwan had awakened something. “It was very enriching for me,” he says, and he wanted to see more of the world. When his mother’s American friend, a Fulbright Scholar from Sausalito studying Nepali, invited him to visit her in Sausalito, he jumped at the chance. So in 1998, at the age of 28, he arrived in California. Shortly after, Sherpa was hired by a Buddhist center in Sebastopol looking for a thangka painter and instructor. “That’s how I got my green card and became a US citizen,” he explains. A new direction When his two-year contract was up, Sherpa moved to Oakland where he had Nepalese friends and began teaching thangka classes. That led to him demonstrating Himalayan thangka painting at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, as part of a residency program called Asia Alive. While there, Jamba Juice reached out to him. The company was looking for an artist to create posters to promote its new Enlightened Smoothies. Sherpa had never heard of Jamba Juice, but he accepted the gig. “That was a new experience for me,” he says. “I had never painted anything other than thangkas before. Eventually I started mingling with more artists in the San Francisco area and they fed me with information on art history, which led me to explore Western art forms.” Exhibitions of contemporary Chinese and South Asian art that he saw in the Bay Area also inspired Sherpa. Seeing artists using traditional techniques to convey contemporary subject matter “was like a jackpot for me,” he says. “I felt this is something I could do too. By 2008 I started creating works, and finally I started working with a gallery—that’s when it all happened.” Himalayan Spirits , 2021. Gold, acrylic, and ink on four canvases. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Arthur and Margaret Glasgow Endowment and the following by exchange: Nasli and Alice Heeramaneck Collection, Gift of Paul Mellon; Gift of Miss Frances Leigh Williams in memory of her brother, Archer Anderson Williams; Gift of the Estate of Mrs. Mary Safford Hoogewerff; and Gift of Mr. George P. Bickford, 2022.74a-d Divine disruption Thankga, comic books, America pop culture—“they all came together when I wanted to create my new contemporary work,” says Sherpa. He also drew inspiration from childhood memories of his Tibetan paternal grandmother, who would talk about Himalayan deities that protected the mountains, water, and forests. “[I wondered] what is a spirit to me?,” he says. “If all the people in the valley left to go somewhere else, would the spirit follow them? And if they do, how do they readjust in this new environment?” Sherpa addresses this divine disruption in his work, playfully depicting displaced deities in a police mug shot, striking a cheeky pose while blowing bubble gum, or dancing amid a cloud of logos (ESPN, Dell, Hello Kitty) and real and fictional contemporary icons (the Dalai Lama, Ai Weiwei, Uncle Sam, and Bart Simpson) while wearing BVDs bearing Damien Hirst spots. These are all done using thangka techniques. He recalls the culture shock he had to navigate when he first arrived in the US. For example, shopping for milk. “There was half and half, two percent, low-fat. In Nepal we have one kind—milk. I guess the spirits in my paintings are like an alter ego. If I’m experiencing this situation, I’m sure the spirit would go through the same readjustment to a new environment. I started weaving these kinds of narratives and creating these characters.” More recently, Sherpa has moved into the abstract realm. These works could be the love child of spin art and Gerhard Richter’s squeegee paintings, but in fact, they are made with the same planned-out precision as a thangka. “When I started creating those abstract works what I was thinking was when we were learning thangka painting it was so rigorous and exact, you had to copy exactly your teacher’s work,” explains Sherpa. “Whereas in the contemporary context I was thinking, maybe even from a Buddhist perspective, is the subject or the object more important?” He wanted to see what would happen if he manipulated a traditional form to the extent that only a few elements were identifiable. Sherpa tried to experiment “through accident,” but wound up exactingly drawing deities made to look abstract. Spiritual Warrior , 2020. Acrylic and ink on two canvases. The KaoWilliams Family Collection Giving back to his community Until 2015, Sherpa spent most of his time in California. Then in April of that year, devastating earthquakes shook Nepal, killing almost 9,000 people. He had been preparing for an exhibition in Hong Kong but returned home to be with his family, who luckily survived. He set up a small studio so he could be near his parents while continuing to work. “It gave me the opportunity to understand the Nepali art scene and meet other traditional artists, like sculptors who work with metals and weavers. I became close friends with them,” says Sherpa, who began to respond to the earthquakes’ effects in his work. He met the metalworker Rajen Shah who used the repoussé technique to create Buddhist ritual objects such as mandalas. Sherpa was fascinated by his skill, which takes 15 to 20 years to develop. But with monastery commissions drying up, the artisan was eking out a living selling work to tourists. Shah was planning to follow many of his compatriots to places like Malaysia and the UAE for construction jobs. Sherpa thought about how 20 years’ worth of traditional skill would be lost. He proposed working together, and the result was the installation Wish Fulfilling Tree , which went from the Hong Kong gallery Rossi & Rossi to the Kathmandu Triennale, the Yinchuan Biennale in China, and finally New York’s Rubin Museum, which acquired the work. It enabled Shah to continue working as a metalsmith. He is now at a monastery in Sikkim. From there Sherpa collaborated with more traditional artisans, such as a bronze artist and weavers, which resulted in him establishing a full studio. Divine Disruption includes a rug made by those weavers. While helping keep traditions alive, Sherpa is also a conduit to the ways of the contemporary art world. Because it can take him up to three months to complete a painting, he hired three assistants whom he also mentors. Today he has 16 assistants—all young thangka painters—who allow him to accommodate multiple exhibitions and in turn learn from Sherpa. When Sherpa found out Nepal has three art schools that collectively see about 120 artists graduate every year in a country that has few fine art galleries and no art museums, he opened the Takpa Gallery in 2023 as a platform for a new generation of Nepalese creatives. Kindred spirits Long fascinated by traditional Hawaiian culture and art, Sherpa sees Divine Disruption as a “precious opportunity for me to share my work and to learn more about the community in Hawai‘i,” he says. He has created two new works for the exhibition. One of them, The Portrait of Spirits , “is inspired by the fact that this exhibition is taking place in Hawai‘i,” he says. “I feel the commonality between Hawaiian ancestral culture and the Himalayan culture is that it involves a deep connection to nature and spirits, with traditional figures representing the forces of nature.” Top banner Tsherin Sherpa in his studio Suggested stories New jewelry line is inspired by HoMA artworks GAMAR x HoMA collection reimagines HoMA artworks as ethically crafted gemstone jewelry, inspired by O’Keeffe, Hokusai, Guanyin, and more. Story The Garden Club of Honolulu wants you to “Imagine That!” May 8-10 Experience Imagine That!—the Garden Club of Honolulu’s Major Flower Show at HoMA, May 8–10, featuring stunning floral design, sustainability, and community inspiration. Story From the Archives: What’s in a name? 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