In Shuri, Blake Lannon invites us into a quiet threshold: a place where matter listens, where spirit takes form, and where healing does not arrive by force, but through time, attention, and balance. This exhibition unfolds as a contemplative journey—one rooted in ancient knowledge, lived experience, and a profound dialogue with the Earth.

The title Shuri evokes the latent meeting of matter and spirit. It suggests seeds held beneath the soil, vessels carrying memory, and forms that breathe together as one body. Here, painting becomes both ritual and refuge. Each work holds a sense of fragility that is not weakness, but origin: healing born from vulnerability, becoming shaped by care rather than domination.

Blake Lannon's artistic path spans over five decades. Originally from California, she began exhibiting in the 1970s in Los Angeles, with early shows at the historic Women's Building and Artists for AIDS. In the early 1980s, she moved to New York City, where she immersed herself in the vibrant Soho art scene, sharing studios and ideas with artists who became mentors, collaborators, and lifelong friends. This was a period marked by the rise of conceptual art, feminism, and neo-expressionism—movements that continue to echo in her work.

Alongside her studio practice, Lannon worked within major cultural institutions as a museum store buyer and as Director of Public Relations for the South Street Seaport Museum. Her professional life brought her into close contact with artists, curators, and global initiatives, including events for the United Nations celebrating figures such as Richard Serra and world peace projects with Swatch.

Her paintings and assemblages are known for their dense layering of paint and mixed media, guided by a central belief: that all material things carry weight, balance, and presence. For Lannon, equilibrium—within the artwork and within ourselves—is essential to remaining centered amid difficulty. Even at monumental scale, her works radiate a deep, grounding stillness.

After returning to California, her focus shifted toward the concept of "Earth as Body." Witnessing landscapes scarred by mining and deforestation, she began creating works inspired by aerial views of terrain—where devastation and beauty coexist. From destruction, new color emerged: the vivid minerals and pigments left behind, transformed into sites of renewal.

Now living in Mexico, Lannon's gaze has shifted once again. The land, its history, and its generosity have given rise to a powerful new body of work centered on vessels—jars, bowls, womb-like forms. These are not utilitarian objects, but symbolic containers: holding grief, memory, grace, medicine, and spirit. They speak to our human capacity to protect, transform, and heal what is visible and invisible.

A key presence within Shuri is Ixchel, the ancient Mayan goddess of the Moon, love, gestation, medicine, and textile arts. Known as "The Glowing Lady" and "The Large Rainbow," Ixchel embodies cycles of creation, destruction, and renewal. Lannon recounts how she began painting this figure without knowing her name—guided instead by intuition, symbols, and recurring forms: a rabbit, vessels of water, flowers, a radiant feminine presence. Only later did she recognize Ixchel fully, understanding that the painting had emerged from a deeper ancestral memory rather than conscious intent.

Shuri resonates as a cross-cultural, timeless language. Seeds become medicine and fate. Vessels become wombs and wounds. The works do not explain; they hold. They invite us to slow down, to listen, and to remember that balance—between body and land, spirit and matter—is not something we conquer, but something we tend.

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