Jill O'Bryan | a new breath: Opening Saturday, May 2, 2026

The exhibition 'a new breath' marks Jill O'Bryan's first solo exhibition at the gallery. It brings together three interconnected bodies of work that trace Jill O'Bryan's decades-long investigation recording interactive processes with the elements: Earth and air—frottage drawings (rubbings) of the ground, lotus drawings, and variations on breath meditation drawings. 

Her Ground Paintings begin on the desert floor of New Mexico, where O'Bryan unfurls large sheets of primed canvas, lies down upon the earth, and creates frottage drawings using hard ink blocks — allowing the contours of the land to emerge directly through the surface. Floating indigo ink across these impressions and drawing into them with black oil stick, she renders not a representation of the desert, but a trace of an encounter: the moment the body becomes horizon between geological time below and celestial space above.

Equally dynamic are her Breath Drawings, born from O'Bryan's discovery of Tonglen, a Buddhist breathing practice that teaches compassion. Made on featherweight Bhutan Mitsumata paper, these works accumulate tens of thousands of individual graphite breath marks — each lasting the duration of a single inhale and exhale — until the paper itself begins to fray under the weight of accumulated marks, and the weight of the graphite. Among them are her newly created Breath Circles, durational inversions of the Zen ensō, in which two half-circles are built breath by breath on layered sheets of paper until a “shadow” graphite drawing emerges on the sheet below. The two halves are then sewn together with gold-leafed thread.

Her Lotus Drawings extend this exploration of meditative processes into image. Each petal is drawn within the cadence of nam-myoho-renge-kyo — the mantra of 13th-century Nichiren Buddhism — a chant that affirms the fundamental interconnectedness of all life. The finished works are not so much images of a flower as they are quiet records of breath, sound, and attention moving through the body over time.

On Thursday, May 14, from 5 to 6 pm, join us at the gallery for a conversation presented in collaboration with the Santa Fe International Literary Festival, featuring artist Jill O'Bryan alongside poet Rick Barot and author Laura Paskus.

Rick Barot is a National Book Award finalist and the author of the poetry collections 'The Galleons' and 'Moving the Bones.'
Laura Paskus is an acclaimed environmental journalist and the author of 'At the Precipice: New Mexico’s Changing Climate'.