Jill O’Bryan splits her time between New York City and wide-open spaces in New Mexico. She maps resonances created during dynamic and meditative interactions with elements of nature. Breath Drawings are made during breathing meditations. Desert Frottages are rubbings of land.  They begin on the desert floor of New Mexico, where O'Bryan unfurls large sheets of paper or primed canvas, lies down upon the earth, and creates frottage drawings using graphite or hard ink blocks — allowing the contours of the land to emerge directly through the surface.

Jill O’Bryan earned an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1990, followed by a PhD in Art Theory and Criticism from New York University in 2000. Her work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally, and is held in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum, the National Gallery of Art Library, and the Davis Museum at Wellesley College, among others. She lives and works in SoHo, Manhattan and New Mexico with her husband, artist Charles Ross.

"The subject of my work is the interaction of the human body with Earth’s environment. Early on I discovered that I see through touch—touching the air with breath, touching the land by lying down on it, touching the moon by meditating beneath it. I transform these elemental interactions into drawings, sculptures, collages, paintings, and installations. Across these media, my work grows from lived, moment-to-moment encounters with the elements that shape our lives—air, earth, water, fire, and sky." - Jill O'Bryan