Breath Meditations
Repetitive mark-making

Breath Meditations is an ongoing, contemplative series rooted in the connection between breath and mark — each gesture on the paper a direct expression of a single breath cycle.

The practice began with Ganana, a Buddhist breath-counting technique, and Susoku-Kan, its Japanese Zen equivalent — both focusing mental attention on the rhythm of inhalation and exhalation by numerically counting each breath cycle. Over time, the counting fell away. What remained is something less controlled and more essential: a rhythmic, repetitive state in which marks arise naturally from the breath, without directing or measuring it. The rhythm finds itself.

Each mark — a dot, a line, a trace — is made with whatever tool and material the moment calls for: brushes, pipettes, cotton swabs, sticks. Sumi ink, mineral pigments, ox gall, animal glue — applied to wet, moist, or dry Washi paper. No two breaths, no two marks, no two conditions are identical. This is not imperfection to be corrected, but the natural expression of Wabi-Sabi — the beauty of impermanence and the unrepeatable moment.

Each mark arises from the same gesture — and yet no two are identical. Uniform in origin, singular in expression. It is precisely this difference that carries meaning — the universe tends toward diversity and development, not replication.

The series unfolds in two distinct approaches: