About

VISUAL artist, teacher, and lineage holder of Tibetan Buddhist sacred art.

The late Kalsang Dawa was a Tibetan artist, teacher, and lineage holder based in Vancouver, British Columbia. He lived and worked with gratitude on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations, where he preserved and shared the Tibetan Buddhist sacred art tradition while evolving his work through a contemporary aesthetic.

He was among a small number of Tibetan painters who remained deeply committed to the exacting techniques and sacred materials of traditional thangka painting. His original paintings were created using mineral pigments derived from semi-precious stones, along with 24-karat gold and sterling silver. Kalsang’s original works and prints have appeared in collections and institutions around the world, including the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, the Royal BC Museum in Victoria, the Rubin Museum in New York, the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. They are also held in monasteries and private collections in Canada, the United States, Europe, China, Japan, and India.

Born in Tibet, Kalsang began his formal artistic training with monks and master tradition-holders at the age of fourteen, developing a profound foundation in the philosophy, iconography, symbolism, and disciplined techniques of Tibetan thangka painting. He made his way to Dharamsala, India, a vital locus of Tibetan Buddhist spiritual and cultural preservation. There, he spent eight years in rigorous apprenticeship with Venerable Sengye Yeshi, the personal painter of His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama.

In the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, artistic mastery is transmitted through a deeply reverential teacher-student relationship, in which technique, philosophy, discipline, and spiritual understanding are passed from master to student over many years. Through this training, Kalsang became a master of Tibetan painting, preserving a lineage rooted in meditation, devotion, and centuries of artistic and spiritual discipline. At Emily Carr University of Art and Design, he mentored students in the philosophy, discipline, and practice of thangka painting, extending the lineage through teaching as well as art. His legacy endures in the works he created, the students he guided, and the sacred tradition he carried with devotion from the Himalayas to the Pacific Coast.