Kristin Sorensen: Life Indwelt
Sorensen’s work invites a slower way of seeing. It reflects on the beauty woven into ordinary moments and the quiet presence of the everyday. Her paintings often carry themes of faith, parenthood, creativity, and the rhythms of home.
Your exhibition pairs paintings with poems. How do you see the visual and written elements working together to deepen the visitor’s experience?
Every person on earth has a life just as complex and beautiful as the next. But we don't see that inner life when just looking at them. We see what's on the surface; it takes context, conversation, and closeness to really see beneath the surface. Just walking by these paintings, they may not seem like much to anyone at first. Just a landscape, a still life, a portrait. But with the poems you get context, conversation, and closeness. You have a small window into the thoughts behind the image, and through that window you can really see what's going on.
You mention that these works come from personal memories and prayers. How did the process of reflecting on these moments shape your creative practice?
I had to stop creating for “likes” and had to start co-creating with God. My belief is that God desires to use us through the gifts he has given us. I have a deep passion for history and memory and connectedness. But I also really latch onto the way a moment felt rather than remembering or depicting it perfectly. So, I chose to start making and reframing my art and my gifts to reflect on those things in a way that also glorified God.
Domestic scenes can often be overlooked as “ordinary.” Why do you feel it’s important to honor and elevate them through art?
Domestic spaces are the quiet backdrop of most of our lives. It's where love, growth, faith, and even grief unfold in small, unseen ways. I’m drawn to them because they hold the essence of being human. They connect us in the most ordinary of ways. We all eat, read, bathe, clean, and so much more in these spaces. By painting these moments, I want to slow them down, to remind myself and others that the ordinary is not insignificant. The more we can relate to one another and see the beauty in each other, the closer we get to unity - a place where the things that we have in common outweigh the ways we are different.
In creating Life Indwelt, what was the most meaningful moment for you personally? Either in making a piece or in realizing its message?
I think writing the poems was the most meaningful. I challenged myself to really dig deep into what drew me to paint each piece and to not just describe the piece but tell its story. That was fun and hard and really cathartic for me.
How do you hope visitors will carry the themes of this exhibit into their own daily lives?
My first hope is to bring glory to God, always. My second and third hopes are that visitors would be encouraged to slow down and to maybe consider (or reconsider) a relationship with God.
If someone walked away remembering just one thing from Life Indwelt, what would you want it to be?
I hope they walk away with a sense that God dwells in the ordinary. I'd want them to know that His presence fills even the quiet, overlooked corners of our lives. Life Indwelt is about that mystery: how divine light filters through our daily moments, if only we stop to see it.
Life Indwelt is on display at the Meadows Museum from September 30 – October 31, 2025.