Linda Sorensen

Personal background:

Linda L. Sorensen was born on March 3, 1945 in Eureka, California, and her maiden name was Linda Louise Larsen. She then lived in Chicago and nearby cities through grade school, and in Summit, New Jersey, and finally Elmhurst, Illinois, during junior high and high school. After the University of Wisconsin, Madison, she moved to Berkeley, California, in 1967. She graduated from Berkeley Law in 1976, and was a San Francisco litigation/appellate attorney for more than 40 years. She now lives in Bodega Bay, which is North of San Francisco.

Linda was always drawing, from her earliest years, and she remembers getting caught at it in academic classes - sketching the people around her. In her younger years she painted with water-based media in a realistic vein. She began oil painting in high school, moving from abstract-influenced landscapes into colorful abstract expressionism. One of her paintings, Slide, was included in a juried exhibition at the University of Wisconsin (circa 1964). (A few of her abstract paintings including "Slide" from the 60's into the 80's are pictured below, and in the "abstracts" section of this website.)

Tree Legend
Oil on canvas, 30 x 40
not for sale

Linda and her husband Dan Rohlfing operate Bodega Bay Heritage Gallery, the fine art gallery that specializes in Early California Art 1850-1950. bodegabayheritagegallery.com Linda paints principally on the Northern Coast of California, including Sonoma and Marin Counties, and also is inspired in-person in Hawaii and the Southwest and Northwest. She has studied with Camille Przewodek, and taken workshops with Jeannette LeGrue and J. Thomas Soltesz.

Artist's statement:

Linda crafts oil paintings dancing on the intersection of the abstract with the traditional, with a modernist vision that is bold, bright, stylized and simplified. She employs mixed and altered perspective, and seeks to capture the depth and vibrancy of a scene as if the viewer were soaring over it and participating in the joy of the universe. Clouds are often a signature feature.

Linda is most grateful to Vincent and to the Post-Impressionist painters of the Brittany coast such as Paul Gauguin, Odilon Redon, Henry Moret, not to emulate their personal styles, but for the "permission" they explored for imagination and enhanced/altered color.

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