I am Nawang_rin. My roots are Tibetan and I was born in Sikkim. My parents had decided to send me to an English private school, where we were taught discipline, obedience and toughness towards ourselves in order to prepare us for careers as doctors or engineers. Artists were at the other end of this scale: they were valued for nothing. It was at this school that I developed my healthy self-confidence and my ruthless ambition and since then I have always had to be the best in everything I do.
REALISTIC
My mother was an artist and teacher and I was given pens and paper when I was five. I began drawing obsessively and by the time I was nine I had specialized in photorealistic portraits. I taught myself to play guitar when I was eleven. At the same time, I discovered sport as my second great passion. I took up soccer and told myself to start conditioning training at four o'clock every day. Everything changed when I came to Münster at the age of 13 with my mother and siblings, where our family already lived. My immigration was a fascinating culture shock for me: Suddenly the school was very relaxed, you were allowed to laugh and not get beaten, the teachers were interested in their students, they discovered my musical talent and brought me into the student band as a guitarist. By the time I turned 18, I was betting everything on my new dream: I wanted to be the biggest rock star. At the same time I started karate, my sensei challenged me very hard in training, I got better and better until he finally asked me to make a decision: either art or karate. I stuck with karate and fought very successfully up to the 1st Kyu belt. When I was 19, I was looking for new sporting challenges and switched to kickboxing.
At the same time, I attended the Münster vocational school for graphics and design and this training gave me renewed artistic strength, which is why I enrolled in design studies at MSD after school. Then that day came when a friend who liked my drawings had the idea that I should check out a tattoo parlor. He wanted me to tattoo him someday. Up to that point, I had only ever come into contact with tattooing once in my life, when I was 8 years old and used ink and a sewing needle to engrave a letter on my hand. What was particularly painful about it was that it took me a long time to dispose of it with steel wool. With this new idea, my friend put me in touch with a studio near Münster. Here I learned about Chicano Lettering and realistic and perfected myself in realsitic portraiture. So I started tattooing, built up a customer base and at some point was ready to start up: At the age of 26, I founded my first studio in K14 with two friends.
SKETCH
This co-working space in the middle of Münster was a magical melting pot of creative minds right from the start. With this studio we had complete freedom for the first time. None of us did what the others did, everyone followed their own style and everyone was their own boss. But that doesn't mean we didn't cheer each other on and that can be hard at times. But we were so free that it was clear that members of the studio community rotated. So I was able to gain many different experiences from many people. But I'm the only one of the 1st generation who didn't rotate. And when I was 27 I founded LHA MA YIN. I work with great attention to detail, love freehand because I don't want to repeat motifs, and so I create each work of art individually. Like me, my style is constantly moving and growing. My favorites are realistic, sketch and anime.
