Tibetan Wheel of Life

Yama, lord of death, grips the whole wheel (red face, green eyes, bared fangs, a crown of five skulls and green flame for hair) while the six realms turn between his claws, each a crowded miniature of temples, rivers, trees and tiny figures. At the hub, three animals circle one another inside a black and white band. It is a mid-twentieth-century thangka, painted on cloth to hang at a monastery gate.

The six segments are all the same pale green and cream landscape at the same small scale, so this is a slow one, worked realm by realm. Finished size 68.5 x 50.8cm.