About 15 years ago I decided I should take down the posters and hang original art in my home, but I couldn't afford art that I liked, so I thought I better make my own. Painting was such a thrill, I never looked back. Putting the next right color on the canvas is the crux of my joy. Painting all night is a wicked, wicked pleasure.

In 1992, on a trip to Dharamsala, blase hents met His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and began practicing Tibetan Buddhism. Eight years later he was ordained losangmonlam, a monk of the Tibetan Buddhist monastic tradition by Choden Rinpoche in California; later taking full ordination with His Holiness Dalai Lama in a ceremony held at his temple in Dharamsala.

losangmonlam continued to practice. study and teach in the San Francisco Bay Area, under the guidance of Geshe Ngawang Dakpa. During this same period he also studied and practiced at Sera Jey Monastery, a University for Advanced Buddhist Studies and Practice, in Bylakuppe, South India.

In 1998, he started the Tsa Tsa Studio—Center for Tibetan Sacred Art in 1998 combining his work as an artist with his spiritual practice, creating walls of Buddha images and other commissioned installations.
Blase wasn't born to any of this.

The first years of his life was shared with his family of five brothers in a farming community on the edge of the Red River Valley in North Dakota.

Graduating high school in southeastern Minnesota he went on to receive his undergraduate degree from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. And, not until he was just shy of finishing his M.B.A Degree at Boston University, did he finally honor his inner quest to seek answers. His journey began by traveling the world to connect with a wide range of people from all walks of life and traditions.

Three years later, blase returned to the United States having discovered, among many other things, his considerable talent and joy at being an artist - a painter and sculptor. It was as an artist he presented himself to His Holiness the Dalai Lama on a later trip of exploration.

His art in the field of video installation included shows in the Bay Area in the late 1980s and early 1990s. He also contributed his visual skills as an artist in the area of graphic design at this time. When given the practice to undertake 400,000 Buddha images, he founded the Tsa Tsa Studio—Center for Tibetan Sacred Art where he taught workshops and was commissioned to undertake several "Buddha Wall Art Installations" in the Bay Area.

In January of 2010, he made the decision to resign his community life as a monk and return to offer service in the larger world community.

losangmonlam remains in the San Francisco bay area as an artist, painting and writing. His paintings and reflections draw upon the world's spiritual traditions allowing the integration of Buddhist principles into the cultural and spiritual experience of the individual practitioner, his students, friends, and colleagues. With over twenty years of practice and study both as a monastic and layperson, combined with travels around the world, he brings a unique and generous perspective to his art.

All of my paintings are an expression of a fascination with light in dark places.  As I worked my way through the koi series, I pared down until only parts of the fish were seen fleetingly as they swam off the edges of the paintings--glimmers of light passing through a watery darkness.  Since 2003 I have been painting the varying blue waters of swimming pools.  What all the paintings share is a sense of stillness and mystery.  The more time spent with them, the more there is to see.

"I paint what I love, and I love what I paint."

I am an artist. Painting is a joy to me. I paint what I love, and I love what I paint. Painting takes me to a place where I can reach into a deeper part of myself and bring forth my unique expression of what I find beautiful. The sources of my inspiration come from every direction—from experience, from myth and metaphor, from the imagination, from the things that move me and intrigue me. My creativity is ignited by a wise and expressive face, by a serendipitous movement, by a surprising collision of color, form, and light.

These precious slices of beauty come together in my mind’s eye, where they are constructed into an assemblage that I find pleasing. Before I set down a brush stroke, I allow the imminent creation to gestate for a while. I give the painting time to come into being within me. Its essence is established before I even begin.

When I approach the canvas, it is with purpose and clarity, but also with flexibility and openness, so that the painting achieves its fullness in a way that befits its essence. Every painting must find its own way, its own distinct expression. At times, a painting waits for my guidance, and at times, it coaxes me into taking an unexpected path. I know a piece is complete when it brings a smile to my face, and I can step back and say, “This is good. This is true. This is beautiful. And, I love it.”