Jill O'Bryan Art

Jill O'Bryan Art

  • EXHIBITIONS
    • "Breathing into the Elements", Zane Bennett Contemporary Art, Santa Fe
    • "Breath Taking", New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe
    • "Jill O'Bryan" [TXST] Galleries
    • "Mapping Resonance", CCA Santa Fe
    • Margarete Roeder Gallery, NYC
    • "one billion breaths", Phillips Collection, Washington DC
    • "rock, paper, breath", Gallery Joe
    • Uruboros Dance for "Mapping Resonance", CCA, Santa Fe
  • SITE SPECIFIC INSTALLATIONS
    • "7.8 billion of us breathing together..."
    • A Particular Kind Of Solitude, NYC
    • A Place To Which We Can Come, Brooklyn, 2012
    • "To breathe..." in Las Vegas, NM
    • Take a billion breaths
  • WORK
    • Cone Paintings 2022
    • 2021 - 2022 Element Paintings
    • 2020 Quarantine Drawings
    • The Shape of the Sound of a Breath
    • Tonglen Breath Drawings
    • Archived Breath Drawings
    • X x 20 Breath Drawings
    • Desert Frottage
    • Desert Frottage (squares)
    • on, and just above ground
    • Metate Paintings
    • Early Drawings
    • Early Paintings
    • Philosopher Stones
    • Grid Drawings
    • Artist Books
      • Breaths
      • Circles 3
    • Performance
  • ABOUT
    • CV
    • Articles, Interviews, Links
    • Writing
  • NEWS
39,390 breaths between June 13, 2011 and March 8, 2012
graphite on rice paper
8 x 8 inches

Col. Davis Art Museum, Wellesley College


The Tonglen series are durational drawings where I record my own breaths to capture time. The titles of the drawings are the number of breaths followed by the dates between which they are recorded. I create the drawings in marathon sessions lasting up to 12 hours. Tonglen mediation is a Buddhist practice of compassion in which one breathes in others' pain, and breathes out relief from that pain. The Tonglen drawings capture the residue left behind by each breath.


All images copyright Jill O'Bryan

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