The Gallery: Dylan Mortimer

While staying at Crossroads Hotel, check out The Gallery to view the work of current artist in Residence, Dylan Mortimer.

Dylan Mortimer is a multidisciplinary artist whose work transforms personal experience into dazzling expressions of resilience, hope, and renewal. Diagnosed with cystic fibrosis at three months old, Mortimer has undergone two double lung transplants, profoundly shaping his artistic practice. His work merges anatomy, faith, and transformation, using glittering surfaces and luminous textures to bring visibility to the unseen forces that sustain us.

Mortimer earned his BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute and his MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York. His exhibition history includes renowned venues such as David Zwirner Gallery in New York, Columbia University, The Longwood Arts Gallery in the Bronx, the Dumbo Arts Center, PS 122 Gallery in New York, Boots Contemporary Art Space in St. Louis, the Aqua Art Fair in Miami, Benrimon Contemporary in New York, the Kansas City Jewish Museum, and the Leedy-Voulkos Art Center in Kansas City.

About the exhibition – Breath is both effortless and essential, a rhythm that moves through us without thought—until it doesn’t. It is a quiet miracle, unseen yet vital, fragile yet resilient. In Breathe and Rise, Dylan Mortimer transforms the act of breathing into something boldly visible—a radiant testament to perseverance, renewal, and the power of joy.

Through shimmering textures, luminous colors, and intricate organic forms, Mortimer’s work captures the unseen forces that sustain us. Lungs glow, trees pulse with energy, and the rhythms of inhalation and exhalation emerge as dazzling visual landscapes. His art turns struggle into radiance, elevating the everyday miracle of breath into a celebration of possibility and transformation.

At a time when the world feels in flux, when hope can seem distant, Breathe and Rise offers a moment to pause—to take in something luminous, to witness beauty as an act of resilience. Mortimer’s work reminds us that lightness does not mean weightlessness but rather the strength to rise, again and again. Joy is not an escape; it is a necessity, a force that carries us forward.

This exhibition invites us to breathe deeply, to embrace beauty as a declaration of life, and to recognize that even in uncertainty, there is always space to rise. Dylan Mortimer: Breathe and Rise is curated by Tiffany Meesha Thompson, EMBA, Executive Director of Petrichor Projects.