The Siddhartha’s Intent Art Gallery was born from the aspiration to create a central place for Buddhist artists to be seen and supported and for art lovers to enjoy and be touched by these artists’ creations. 

Since the time of the Buddha, art has always played a significant role for Buddhists, serving as both a medium for expressing religious ideals and for teaching, inspiring, and communicating with practitioners.

In the initial phases of Buddhist art, Buddha was not depicted in human form. For the first several hundred years after the life of the Buddha, the Buddha was represented by aniconic symbols, such as a wheel, an empty throne, the Bodhi Tree, or a pair of footprints.

The first known depiction of the Buddha in human form appeared in the first century CE in what is now northern India and Pakistan. Since then, Buddha’s form has had many iterations and interpretations across Asia, as seen by the varying styles from region to region. As Mahayana Buddhism took hold in certain countries and regions, Buddhist art flourished, with ever-expanding expressions of teachings, lives of the Buddha, bodhisattvas, Buddhist and non-Buddhist deities, and eventually interpretations of tantric teachings. Tibetan Buddhist art, including statuary in the form of stone and bronze sculpture, scroll paintings (thangkas), temple wall and cave paintings, were (and continue to be) used primarily as religious meditational devices.

So naturally when Tibetan Buddhism was introduced to the West, art was an important part of that introduction. Today, there are many contemporary artists creating Buddhist-inspired artwork and finding novel ways to express the dharma. Some artists are born in countries with a long Buddhist history and others are born in countries where Buddhist traditions are still young; some are hidden practitioners and others are established teachers. Our team aspires to bring these beautiful, contemporary expressions of Buddhist art to a wider audience and allow them to touch and awaken people’s hearts. Our aspiration is that this be more than a simple exhibition of art but also an offering to all those present at the seat of Buddha’s enlightenment. May artists and potential artists be inspired to express and share the dharma through their work, and may all those who view it be further drawn to Buddha’s wisdom.