WILD PLACES WILD HEARTS:
NOMADS OF THE HIMALAYA
by Allen Smutylo

Book Description

For the past 25 years, Canadian artist Allen Smutylo has travelled and created artwork in some of the most remote and desolate places on Earth. In the High Arctic, Patagonia, the Amazon, Antarctica, and the Himalaya, Smutylo has sought his muse.

On a trip to eastern Ladakh in the central Himalaya in 2001, Smutylo encountered a small tribe of Tibetan Buddhist nomads known as the Changpa. That first fleeting vision of a legendary and wildly independent people stayed with the artist. Over the following six years, he returned to live and travel with the nomads, documenting his experiences in art and writing. Told in vivid prose and unforgettable artwork, Wild Places Wild Hearts is the story of this artist's time with the Changpa. At an altitude of 15,000 feet in one of the world's harshest environments, Smutylo had the rare opportunity to experience the highly complex and rich culture of the Changpa. In day-to-day life, sacred rituals and community celebrations, he observed and documented their unique lifestyle on the roof of the world. With these tribes, he found a well-adapted, proud people inextricably tied to the Himalayan mountains and to their herds of grazing animals. He also discovered that the nomads' ability to sustain themselves, as they have for 2,000 years, is now at risk from a rapidly changing world.

Passionately written and richly depicted in artwork, Wild Places Wild Hearts takes the reader into a strange and rarified world. Deeply spiritual, compassionate and archaic, the nomads' culture has startling relevance for Western society.

Over 130 colour paintings, etchings, drawings and collages further bring to life the amazing story told here. Smutylo's incisive portraits of the Changpa and their world reveal a fascinating people, inseparable from their faith and tied to the rugged landscape. By turns journal, travelogue, memoir, art book and essay, Wild Places Wild Hearts reveals a little known and truly extraordinary culture - one that nourishes the eye, the mind, and the soul.

 

 

Allen Smutylo
Big Bay, RR #2
Wiarton, Ontario, N0H 2T0
Canada
email: allensmutylo@bmts.com