Everywhere Present Yet Nowhere Visible
Joel Meyerowitz
When I stand in front of Rinpoche's paintings the first thing I feel is an open unselfconsciousness, a joyous freedom in the way the paint is laid down, and a feeling for the whole space of the canvas. I sense that the painting begins with the first stroke and proceeds not from conception, but from reception, and that "ideas," when they appear are free ideas that carry the artist along on the trip they have taken him in on. I most often see landscape ideas embedded in the work, but they are suggestive rather than literal, they appear more in terms of scale than in rendered actuality. There are forces at work here, lyrical, playful forces that, like magical realism, assert themselves in the form of color or momentum or physicality; they direct the artist to their potential, and he follows, openheartedly.
What is amazing to me is how sure his touch is. I don't see hesitation or overworking of anything in these paintings. My sense is that he is everywhere present and yet nowhere visible.