We were lucky to catch up with Tiffani Gyatso recently and have shared our conversation below.
Tiffani, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Are you happier as a creative? Do you sometimes think about what it would be like to just have a regular job? Can you talk to us about how you think through these emotions?
Anyone with a creative mind is an artist. We are being creative when we dress, when we clean, cook, talk, love; we are also very creative and imaginative to create problems and chaos too. Actually creativity is the very essence of what make us humans, is the capacity to be so curious to the point of studying, analysing and understanding to the depth. Is curiosity that sets our heart in fire and moves our lives with purpose – purpose that we were so creative to invent! Lets say that an “artist” is the one who just took this inherent human essence to the core, convincing herself and others about the depth of any given subject. Since a child i was curious and fell in love with things like ants, trees, horses, clouds, newspapers in different alphabets, stars, cycles and orbits, geometry, paper, dreams… so many different things which just to have the interest gave purpose to move forward diving into knowing more. If i would have a “regular” job 9 to 5 with someone telling me what to do, it would just not work out… i would probably start creating something different or making to many questions. Maybe that would be welcomed but maybe not, but i think i would be creative enough to find and live my creative essence anywhere – because some many things are interesting. Not only paper, canvas, color and pencils, but also people, breath, glimpses, routine. So i guess if I really look into the question if i would be able to “do something else rather then being an artist” i kind of not follow so much the idea of separation or condition to be an artist. One can be an artist and never actually materialising anything… talking with people is an art, cooking and setting a table for guests is an art, love making is an art, looking out the window and letting the world penetrate your being with its beauty and its fury its an art. One does not NEED anything to be an artist. You are born one and it doesn’t matter then if you have a “regular job” or an atelier job to really live the soul of an artist which is more to do with a state of mind then with “obra primas”.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
Art for me is a state of mind before any “obra prima” is revealed. Anyone can be an artist – is about how you see and interact with the world. But society doesn’t categorize art in this way, so you must do something to be seen as an artist (even for you to see yourself as an artist). As a child i always enjoyed drawing and painting, and then writing and reading poetry, nature, music until I heard some one asking me if I wished to be an artist “when i grow up” – that stunned me for a while… what did i have to do to become something that I think I already am? So, I did worry but not much to “polish” the artist identity. But what moved me always is curiosity with gasoline in my hands ready to be in contact with anything on fire. I love that. These things can be very abstract, like an emotion or an inner vision too. And because i like doing so, i paint.
But besides doing my own expression of paintings, my desire to understand the soul took me from Brazil (where I was born and raised) to India to study Thangka, buddhist art at the Norbulingka Institute for 3 years. Returning to Brazil after this period with a half Tibetan baby son and no money at all… I was luckily invited to paint a buddhist temple in south. I moved there and took the commitment of 5 years to complete the whole project. This commitment was only strong because of my spiritual path grounded in love, devotion and vision. The inner structure is what holds any piece of art.
By observing so many people wishing to follow such path, I started teaching and offering art retreats too, some focusing in the technique but with time i focused more and more on that inner structure, which if you don’t have it then there is no artistic technique that will flourish. And so I invited people for retreats in the nature, connecting to the elements and animals, like horses which for me were and is the fill to hold my essence. These retreats involved cathartic moments – the raw materials of our creations done in all sort of materials I offered, from paint, charcoal, space to dance, to sing, to write. Inviting people to know about their own fire and how to feed the flame, balance it, use it. How can I set your fire with the same elements that sets mine? Maybe is not the same – so one must go into their own inner and outer journey to discover it.
My love for many artistic expression took me to many parts of the world, as I am curios and know what feed my flame, I connected to many traditional sacred arts and artists like of buddhism from Tibet, Hinduism in India, Islamic sacred geometry in Morocco, Christian iconography in Mexico and Peru intertwined with spiritual, local and ancient knowledge.
Today my work consist still of my commitment to traditional sacred arts, like Thangka and islamic geometry which i create on comission and teach widely in person and online. I love interacting with people and see their light boosting and so I offer art immersions in the art retreat center i built on the mountains of Brazil where I grew up with my family, the Atelier YabYum and also art trips to Asia, where i take groups of like-minded people interested in the path of finding oneself thru the arts and traditions of the world.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
The first time I entered a Vajrayana Buddhist monastery was in Mongolia in the year 2000, i was 18 years old. At that time my family and I lived in a motorhome traveling from Europe across Russia and reaching Mongolia to settle for a few months there. Of course it was an mind opening with so many adventures and stories, but seeing the sacred art of the old buddhist monasteries brought me something familiar about my own old soul and somehow there was clear I would follow the path of a sacred artist. The abbot from the Gandam Monastery, a very important lama adressed me, looked into my eyes and said “you? you will become a sacred artist”. I truly don’t know what he saw, but i took his words like the truth of the universe and kept it with carved on my heart like as if Nostradamus had set my whole life right there. I made it so at least… because staying in Mongolia to start studying buddhist art had many obstacles, like the first being able to sustain myself there. My parents continued living in the motorhome now on a distant far out monastery in the steppes. I had to make my own way if i wished for. So I left my parents there and returned to Germany with the Trans-Siberian and for the next 3 years i worked with every possible job: baby sitter, belly dancer for birthday parties, caipirinha-maker and later I got a internship in a graphic design company where i was able to learn and earn… all that with my crooked german language. And finally after 3 years I saved about 3k dollars and thought i can live in India now – where there is a special Tibetan Art institute, called Norbulingka found by HH the Dalai Lama and which the “lama of the universal truth” told me I should go. And then in 2003 I went.
I just didn’t count with one thing, and actually just when i got there – they didn’t accept foreigners. I understood that as “I am being tested, soon the door will open” (is amazing to remember these days, or i was terrible naive which made me terrible persistent, or my faith was guided by the Buddha). For 3 months I was in Dharamsala, during the mansoon. I got sick like hell and I cannot remember one moment i thought i should return. I got involved with some volunteer work for the Tibetan refugees, where I also met Kelsang (who would be the father of my son years later).
One beautiful morning (not complete beautiful… I had a terrible bawl problems) but a friend i got to know heard my story and told me that the Norbulingka was in need of a grafik designer and i should approach them. So we did together on that “beautiful morning”. They welcomed us and wanted to job done, but they did not turn so content when i said I did not want payment or anything, i want to exchange in turn with thangka studies. Their look was “young+brazilian+girl=problem”. They agreed for one month.
I cannot express the joy I felt that day and soon started my routine. But still, I had to know the thangka master, who we all called with respect “Gen-la”. Who spoke no other language then Tibetan and who taught only men, which one third were monks. How Gen-la sculpted my ego with a spoon, tough and gentil always, but it took simple 1 year and half for him to take me seriously and adress me with my name – till then i was called “inti-bhumo” which is sort of “gringa girl”. And of course, that first 1 month stay and exchange, turned to be 3 incredible years which set the base and foundation of my entire life as a person, an artist and later a teacher too. I wrote a book entitled Like and Thangka in kindle on my website and Amazon.
Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?
Being trained as a traditional buddhist sacred artist and later as in islamic geometry as well, I dedicated a lot of my research and work to develop my voice too which later and still today gives me the ground for the art immersions and retreats where I invite everyone to shake their emotions, memories and bring more sophistication to their own inquiry to be able to then start developing their own “voice”. For these immersion I have to mention and give all the credits and gratitude for my mentors, which were a couple. Marina Abramovich is a performance artist. When i got in contact with her work I cried for several days. That was it! That it is! To become the art, not to do art. That was for me such an important realisation and gave even more meaning to do all what i did – simply to become it. With that I started giving a lot of focus to the presence and posture of my body which made me encounter my next teachers: Yumma Mudra (french) and Michel Raji (Morocco), two professional dancers working together creating their own path of love and awakening called Choreosophy and also the school Danza Duende (today based in Portugal), bringing movement, energy flow and presence to another level I could have never found out alone. They are still my guides which includes the whole community they built all around the world.
The same year I met Yumma and Raji, I also met my zen art master: Alok Hsu Kwang-han, from China, based in Sedona, USA. When i read about him, I also cried my eyes of (I learned that this is a sign!) and was received by Alok to learn and later on to work with him in several retreats and workshops in Sedona and twice at the Omega Center in New York state.
I think its so important for us to honor our teachers, because we are part of something continuous bigger, even the paper and paints we use, we must credit these inventors, we are part of that too. By knowing and honouring that we become as big as them in one unique universe, much interesting and rich then only an individual can do. We are a flow in eternal development.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.tiffanigyatso.com
- Instagram: @tiffanigyatso and @mandalas_online
- Youtube: Tiffani Gyatso
- Other: Read my biomonthly articles at Buddhist Door Magazine