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Life Onboard |
LAST UPDATE
July 12, 2005
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| site design imagesparkle.com |
| April 9, 2005 |
Discovering the Art of Tibet – Don Van Amerongen |
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| Mr. Don Van Amerongen (photo by Jeff Kennel) |
Mr. Don Van Amerongen is a specialist on Tibetan art who joined Peace Boat’s 48th voyage from Las Palmas, Spain to Callao, Peru. In addition to giving lectures on Tibetan history and art, he also provided a fascinating series of workshops on a specialized form of Tibetan art called thangka. Participants in the workshops began by learning about the meaning of the symbols and colors used in thangka, coloring pre-drawn thangka, then moved on to the creation of their own personal thangka. Toward the end of Mr. Van Amerongen’s time onboard, Peace Boat had the chance to talk with him and learn more about his interest in art, Tibet, and time with Peace Boat. |
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| Tibetan girl (photo by Mr. Van Amerongen) |
Peace Boat: First, could you tell us a little bit about your background?
Mr. Van Amerongen: Since birth?
Peace Boat: Sure.
Mr. Van Amerongen: Well, I grew up in Michigan. The Viet Nam war was at its peak when I graduated from high school; I didn’t know what to do, so I went to college. I had a high draft number when I graduated from college, so I didn’t go to Viet Nam.
Peace Boat: Did you want to?
Mr. Van Amerongen: No, I was ready to go to Canada. At university, I studied design and packaging, so I started traveling the country, doing different design jobs and ended up in Denver, Colorado. I had my own studio there and moved into the mountains. I became really interested in photography; the images of the area started to attract me. I also became a fan of Ansel Adams, so I picked up and went to San Francisco and study with him. |
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| art by Mr. Van Amerongen |
Peace Boat: How was that?
Mr. Van Amerongen: It was really great. When you sit down and talk with him, he’s like any other guy… So, I started exhibiting between Mexico and San Francisco. Then two things happened: I had a son and began to feel like I was trapped with photography. So I went back to school and got another bachelor’s degree in painting.
Peace Boat: Why painting?
Mr. Van Amerongen: I felt like I could express more color and more energy. I was doing black and white photography, and I felt painting had more passion to it. So, I started exhibiting and did that for about ten years. I then realized that I wasn’t making enough money and began to branch out. I started my own design business again and since then I have been doing both. |
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| Traditional Tibetan dance (photo by Mr. Van Amerongen) |
Peace Boat: How did you become interested in Tibet?
Mr. Van Amerongen: My wife lived in India and Nepal in the late sixties and early seventies. She always returned there and finally dragged me there in 1991. And I fell in love with it. The Hinduism and Buddhism were far superior to the Catholicism I grew up with. I’m a recovering Catholic. Catholicism is…well, was steeped in a lot of ritual and imagery. At one point they switched it all to English and streamlined it; when I heard it in English I quit. When I see Hindu and Buddhist rituals I often don’t understand the words, but I am a very visual person. |
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| thanga art by Mr. Van Amerongen |
Peace Boat: Since 1991, how many times have you been?
Mr. Van Amerongen: Seven times. Several of the trips were a month, one was a month in Raj Palace in Katmandu where I studied the erotic art there. They’ve got these great palaces there, really decadent. I normally don’t like decadence, but we really had a great time there.
Peace Boat: Could you give us a brief explanation of thangka?
Mr. Van Amerongen: A thangka is a portable document that was symbolic teaching using symbols to teach the teachings of the Buddha instead of words. The monks would take them to far off places, rolling them up and putting them in their bags. |
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| Mr. Van Amerongen giving his first thanga workshop onboard Peace Boat |
Peace Boat: And how did you become interested in thangka?
Mr. Van Amerongen: I think once I went to Tibet and went into all the temples, there was something about the colors and the devotion and dedication to creating so much of this art; it’s just mind boggling.
Peace Boat: I think to many people outside Tibet, Tibetan art and culture seem inaccessible. Did you find it difficult to study about thangka in depth?
Mr. Van Amerongen: Well, there are a couple monks and Tibetan people in San Francisco. In Nepal I had a close contact with thangka painters; there’s a whole street of painters. There’s this group of craftsmen from Nepal who did a lot of the statues and painting. They travel in Nepal and Tibet – they are the tribe that did a lot of the artwork there. They still do all the crafts and statues in Nepal. |
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| Peace Boat participants create their own personal thanga |
Peace Boat: So there are specific symbols and color combinations that convey meaning?
Mr. Van Amerongen: Yes, they use certain colors, like a dark blue on a figure would create wrath. They represent certain elements of humanity, psychic elements.
Peace Boat: Is the thangka workshop that you did on board one that you do often?
Mr. Van Amerongen: No, not at all. I’d done it once before in a local community center, but never on this scale. I never expected seventy people to show up. I couldn’t be happier with the way it turned out. It’s amazing that without my materials* we pieced it together to get us across the Atlantic. Everyone was so passionate – we didn’t lose anyone to boredom. And then when the materials came, there was a whole surge of new people coming. I had planned on making one large thangka because I thought we would only have 10 people interested in making a big project, but there were forty people, so we did forty different thangkas. For me, it was a learning lesson to go with the flow and let things take their course and just be there. |
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| This thanga, made by a Peace Boat participant, was auctioned as a part of Peace Boat’s Peru Fundraising Event. |
Peace Boat: Is there anything else you’d like to tell us?
Mr. Van Amerongen: Yes, about what I got out of Peace Boat. I had this great interaction with the Japanese onboard. I had a yoga teacher who taught me about my feet. I had a calligraphy teacher teach me another lesson about focus. I think just being on the Peace Boat has rekindled my desire to reach out and connect with people – it’s a very natural place to do that.
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| * Many of Mr. Van Amerongen’s workshop materials were delayed in transit and did not reach Peace Boat until Montego Bay.
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