 Amchi
(private collection)
2002, 84" by 60", oil on linen
Jane and her Team presented the painting as a gift to Amchi Tsampa, to his village of Jomsom, and to all the people of Mustang and Nepal (read about this project on the website A Gift for the Village).
This is a portrait of a Tibetan amchi (doctor)
from western Nepal who came and lived with us in Blacksburg for
four months.
He is also a lama (mind-healer), ecologist, farmer,
artist, veterinarian, folk singer, construction worker, archer,
brandy maker, village chairman, museum director, monastery builder,
and teacher.
And, as if these jobs are not enough, in the Italian
film version of Marco Polo, he played the sword-brandishing, dashing
bandit.
He is also the man with whom my friend Jenna Swann
and I, in November, 2000, crossed an 18,000-foot mountain pass,
in a snowstorm, in 2-degree Fahrenheit thin air, near the Tibetan
border.
This is the same pass used by the Karmapa-lama
a few years ago, when he escaped his Chinese guards to go live near
the Dalai Lama in India.
To thank him for this fearlessness and many other
teachings, Jenna and I hope next year to take this painting to him,
in his Himalayan village, as a gift.
Meet Amchi Tsampa
Ngawang
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