The Sherpa are the Nepalese tribe, that mostly lives in the Kumbu area of Mount Everest in eastern Nepal. The Sherpas originated from the eastern part of present day Tibet ["Sher" = East, "pa" = personification], from where they immigrated to Nepal in the 17th century.
Above all, they made a name for themselves as mountain guides in the Himalayas, and there is a special kind of Nepalese naive painting which bears their name: "Sherpa Paintings".
The works of art do not have a religious meaning like the thangkas, but they depict everyday scenes from the lives of the mountain people. Just the painting style and technique are parallels to thangkas.
These paintings are not part of the standard repertoire of the Dharmapala Thangka Centre [they were commissioned works]. However, we are presenting four of them on these pages to show that our artists in the Kathmandu painting workshop are masters of these arts and of course because we think they are simply beautiful. The size of all paintings is 60 x 40 cm.