Jill Sorensen was born in 1966 in
Thames. She completed her Post-Graduate Diploma at Auckland
University's Elam School of Fine Arts in 1995, after gaining a
Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of New South Wales. In
2002, she graduated Master of Fine Arts (1st Class
Honours) at Elam. Sorensen's body of work encompasses
installation, encaustic painting and more recently figurative
painting and drawings.
Her encaustic works make use of a
synthesised, chemical development of the traditional painting
technique in which pigment is bound in a mix of beeswax and tree
resin. In a modern, scientific homage, Sorensen's encaustic recipe
replaces the use of organic resin with transparent, high-gloss,
heat sensitive, synthetic resin and uses artificial, chemical
colouration in place of naturally harvested pigment.
Driven by a fascination with the ever-evolving range of
industrial materials available to artists, Sorensen has mastered
the encaustic medium, overcoming traditional issues of durability
by experimenting with the chemical hardening of the surface. The
results of her efforts in encaustic are works of art with a
resilient, plasticized colour and texture - emblems of the
connotations of the synthetic in the modern world.
Sorensen continues to work as a full time artist and as a tutor
at Whitecliffe College of Arts & Design and has been nominated
as a finalist in major NZ art awards such as the James Wallace Art
awards, Telecom Art awards, Waikato Art awards and the Norsewear NZ
Contemporary Art Awards.