Exhibitions

David Dragonboy Sutherland
Mahakala: Guardian of the Temple
​New and retrospective work
January 7–23, 2016

Reception: Thursday January 21, 6–9pm  
Facebook Event
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Artist's website

“Mahakala” is the wrathful form of the gentle and compassionate Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva. In Tibetan iconography he is usually black, although he appears in other colors as well. He has two to six arms, three bulging eyes with flames for eyebrows, and a beard of hooks. He wears a crown of six skulls.

Mahakala is the protector of the tents of nomadic Tibetans, and of monasteries, and of all Tibetan Buddhism. He is charged with the tasks of pacifying hindrances; enriching life, virtue and wisdom; attracting people to Buddhism; and destroying confusion and ignorance.
—From "Eight Dharmapalas" by Barbara O'Brien​
Mahakala takes those disregarded pieces from the throw away culture and gives them a new life. Imbues them with power inherent only on higher mental planes, unglimpsed by the materially focused consciousness.

His gods i.e. Voltron, Skywalker, Aslan, Peter Pan etc. find homes in those tid bits of refuse he collects in his secret hiding place.

Here he creates the day anew, disregarding the socially accepted collective mandates on good & evil. His will is guided by she, who trains the waters of her body through the forests across the planes, to her ever renewing depths. 

“New does not always have to smell so sterile”, he thinks.

“Why don’t they fix the ones they have instead of making new ones”, he asks.

He plays the game of life and death with tears and undying awareness, with devotion to the dislocated pieces he finds scattered across her disregarded and sourly neglected body.

He follows the path of Mahakala back to the place of eternal beginning.
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He offers himself as loyal retainer, so that all may catch a glimpse and know.