World Inspired Landscapes: Bhutan

 

Bhutan is a small country sandwiched between China and India, located at the foothills of the Himalayas. The government works hard to preserve nature and its beauty through the creation of wildlife preserves and by minimizing high impact activities like heavy industry and certain forms of tourism. It is forbidden to climb the mountains in Bhutan because of their religious and spiritual significance, for this reason the highest peak in the world that has never been climbed is found in Bhutan. I attempted to depict the lush greenery and vertical landscape in the painting, which also depicts a group of religious structures nestled atop a cliff top connected by a precarious winding footpath. As I prepared for this painting using a travel book and internet sources, I was also reading up on Bolivia the next one in the series. There were some interesting parallels between these very different countries, including their vertical landscapes and death defying heights. The other inspiration for the Bhutan painting was 19th century Japanese wood block prints. I just received a book with colour prints of Hiroshige's series called Pictures of Famous Places in the Sixty-odd Provinces, in particular print #10 you can see in the link, it was called Hōrai Temple in the Steep Mountains of Mikawa Province. I know from my visit to Japan that the locals also believe in mountain spirits and build religious structures on the mountainsides. Bhutan seems like a magical place to visit, it is mostly pristine, and has some world class hiking, but on the other hand they are very strict about tourism there for good cause, tourists can leave a big footprint on a country. The other interesting fact I learned is that Bhutan's people are among the happiest in the world. The government forgoes a traditional gross domestic product calculation, instead they make a gross domestic happiness calculation. 

9 x 12" cold press, watercolour, March 2021 (No. 2594)