When slow is sacred: Trishla Jain’s art blends breath, brush, and spirituality | Delhi News – The Times of India

In a frenetic world, her paintings are like a calm meditative walk in the forest — at once tranquil yet transcendent. Aptly titled ‘The Quiet Interlude’, California-based Trishla Jain’s new solo exhibition in Delhi captures her artistic and spiritual journey. In an interview with TOI, the artist talks about duality and her distinctive language of dots and dashes.
Your latest series is about duality — Yantra and Tantra. While both bodies of work share some common elements, they’re also strikingly different. Why did you choose to explore this yin-yang concept?
To me, Yantra and Tantra are not opposites but complements — one doesn’t really exist without the other. They mirror the interplay of containment and expansion, form and formlessness, structure and surrender. Just as the inhale gives way to the exhale, and masculine to feminine, these dual energies live in all of us.

I didn’t consciously set out to explore duality — it was more that the work began to bifurcate on its own. Some pieces moved toward geometric stillness, others wanted to flow, to unravel.
Over time, I began to see them as two strands of the same thread. What I love is that different people connect to different aspects. Some are drawn to the stillness of Yantra, others to the wild expressiveness of Tantra. Together, they reflect the full spectrum of what it means to be human — disciplined and intuitive, structured and spontaneous.
“I think that in order to be an artist, you have to move. When you stop moving, then you’re no longer an artist.” These are the words of the famous American minimalist painter Agnes Martin. How has your art practice ‘moved’ over the years? And do you see parallels in your work and hers?
The moment I drew my first Yantra and painted it in, I felt something shift permanently inside me. When I stepped back and looked at it, there was a sense of profound peace — I knew I’d never go back. That was a moment of movement, of spiritual arrival, that changed the direction of my practice.

Agnes Martin once said that art is the concrete representation of our most subtle feelings. That resonates deeply with me. Her work holds the same paradox I strive for — emptiness that is somehow full, stillness that hums with life. Sitting in the Agnes Martin room at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is one of my favourite quiet rituals.
It’s an oval room, housing her Island series, and it feels like entering a sanctuary made of breath.
Like her, my evolution has been toward simplicity, subtlety, and silence. The movement in my work isn’t dramatic — it’s the slow, invisible shifting of inner tectonic plates. That’s what I trust as an artist.
You’ve been spiritually curious from a fairly young age, and you’ve also studied literature at Stanford. Can you talk about the spiritual and literary influences on your latest collection?
Yes, spirituality and literature are the twin rivers that feed my practice. I often begin a painting by opening a text and letting a line or a passage become the seed. Right now, ‘The Radiance Sutras’ by Lorin Roche is a primary source of inspiration.
It’s a contemporary translation of the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra, and its verses are radiant with imagery, urging you to find the divine in ordinary moments. I also draw from the Patanjali Yoga Sutras, which offer a more disciplined lens into awareness, and the delicate, earthy poetry of the Japanese Zen monk Ryokan.
Language often comes before the painting. But once I begin, the studio becomes a silent space. The words fall away, and only breath, colour, and rhythm remain.
Your paintings have such a spiritual dimension that they seem to provide the viewer with a space for contemplation and meditation. Was that your intent — to center us in a chaotic world?
Very much so. I often think of my paintings as spaces rather than objects — spaces where the viewer can slow down, feel their own breath, and maybe reconnect with some part of themselves that’s gotten lost in the noise.
My intent is not to impose meaning, but to offer a kind of sanctuary. People have told me that standing in front of certain works, they’ve felt a quietness arise — like something in them has been witnessed. That’s the highest gift art can offer, I think. A moment of integration, of pause, of wholeness. Of course, I don’t always know when or how that happens. But I do hold the intention that each piece be made in stillness and offer stillness in return.
In this age where technology has such a pervasive influence on our lives, your work has a time-consuming, labour-intensive quality to it. How important is the process of creation? Though you live in Silicon Valley, do you use tech at all in your work?
My studio is an analog oasis in a digital world. There’s almost no technology involved in my painting process. Everything is chosen with care — the paper, the paints, the brush tip.
The brush is selected based on the exact size and shape of the unit being painted, and there’s something deeply meditative about that precision. I live in Silicon Valley, yes, where everything moves at warp speed. But in the studio, time stretches.
It bends and slows and eventually dissolves. That slowness is part of the work — it’s embedded into every dot and dash. There’s a kind of sacredness in doing something slowly, by hand, especially in an era where everything is built to be fast and replicable. In some ways, my process is a quiet resistance to that pace.
Come April 4, your work will be exhibited in Delhi. Do you feel nervous at all about sharing your work with the world?
It’s such a full-circle moment for me. I was born in New Delhi, and to return now with this body of work — so rooted in my inner journey — feels incredibly tender.
There is always a flicker of nervousness when sharing something so personal, but more than that, I feel honoured. This show is an offering, a bridge between inner and outer, self and collective.
What excites me most is the chance for the work to live beyond me — to connect with someone else’s stillness, someone else’s breath.
If it can do that, even for a moment, then the process has been worth it.