Under the Same Sky: Meeting Jimmy Thapa Again

I first met Jimmy Thapa on 28 May 2025 at Gallery 108. I had gone there to see Kalãko Vansha: The Lineage of Art, Four Generations of Newa Painters, an exhibition that deeply moved me. As someone who works closely with traditional art, I am naturally drawn to questions of lineage, continuity, and inheritance. Seeing four generations sustain and reinterpret a living tradition felt grounding and necessary.

It was within that framework of lineage that I encountered Jimmy.

While the exhibition traced ancestry through family and apprenticeship, Jimmy seemed to trace his through a lifelong experience and sky-gazing.

Upon introduction, he showed us some of his miniature works. They felt very intimate as if carefully preserved fragments of memory. Alongside them was his red book on Mars Move. What struck me was not only his cosmological method of painting according to zodiac alignments, but also the remarkable range of his subjects.

There were landscapes. Scenes from the Ganga. Festival depictions connected to Rato Machhindranath Jatra. Some of these places I recognised immediately, yet they did not resemble what I see today.

They felt historic.

The Ganga miniatures carried a remarkable documentary quality. I later heard that the entire collection had been acquired by a major collector in Kathmandu (really happy for him). The riverbanks he painted, the architecture, the spatial openness, even the rhythm of daily life seemed to belong to another time. Rather than evoking nostalgia, they revealed how places quietly transform over time. Having seen many of these locations in their present condition, I could almost measure that passage of time through his paintings.

His works are not simply aesthetic exercises. They are visual records of lived geography.

Jimmy belongs to a generation that experienced Kathmandu when it remained deeply connected to the wider overland routes linking India, Nepal, and Tibet. Pilgrims, artists, travellers, and seekers moved through these landscapes, carrying ideas, rituals, and stories across the Himalaya. Those experiences continue to shape the visual language of his work.

Much has been studied and written about the trans-Himalayan movements, about pilgrimage corridors and overland routes, as well as the broader context of cultural travel. Yet Jimmy’s works offer something different.

They are neither historical reconstructions nor retrospective narratives viewed through hindsight. They are observations made from within the journey itself. That distinction matters, as his works do not describe journeys. They emerge from lived experience.    

A few days later, on 3 June, I got invited along with gallery owner Sugat Shakya to visit his home. Entering the space felt like stepping into a private observatory. Above us, an expansive zodiac composition stretched across the ceiling, while the walls were filled with decades of his paintings, drawings, and studies. Every room seemed to hold another fragment of his lifelong inquiry. 

We spent hours going through stacks of sketchbooks, loose drawings, and decades of visual documentation. The range was astonishing. Pilgrimage studies. Ritual moments. Architectural sketches. Planetary diagrams. Together they revealed a practice shaped by continuous observation, where earthly landscapes and cosmological movements formed part of the same visual inquiry.

Today, standing inside Akāsa:The Cosmic Wonder at Gallery 108, I found myself thinking back to those earlier encounters.

If his previous works documented rivers, rituals, and landscapes, this exhibition turns its attention almost entirely to the sky.

Black canvases hold zodiac constellations, planetary movements, and cosmic configurations. Whether one approaches them through astrology, symbolism, or purely as visual composition, one aspect remains constant.

Timing. 

Jimmy does not paint impulsively. He waits until the moment aligns. He describes his process as "touch and go," executing a painting in a single uninterrupted flow without revision or correction. Timing is not simply part of his method. It is the method itself.

As someone who engages with both traditional and contemporary art practices, find Jimmy's practice occupying a compelling space between documentation and contemplation. His festival scenes carry ethnographic resonance. His Ganga miniatures feel archival. His zodiac works feel metaphysical. Although these bodies of work appear distinct, they are united by careful observation and a sustained curiosity about how people inhabit both the physical and the cosmic worlds.

There is something deeply compelling about encountering an artist whose practice has never been driven by trend or the market, but by an internal spiritual discipline. Jimmy often describes himself as a spiritual artist. Standing within Akāsa, that description feels less like a statement and more like an accurate reflection of his life's work.

His paintings are not simply representations. 

They a form of meditation, a way of studying time, energy, place and existence itself.

Meeting him again through this exhibition did not feel like discovering a new body of work. It felt like witnessing another chapter in an archive that has been unfolding for decades. Looking back, I realize that Jimmy has always been mapping the universe, first through rivers, festivals, and landscapes, and now through the movements of the sky itself.

Jimmy's works do not tell us where to go.

They remind us how to look.

Because sometimes the real journey begins when we look up.