Jill Ehlert

Biography
Jill’s diverse career in mixed-media art spans 27 years of specialization with specific emphasis on the creation of experimental water-media, drawing and collage. In addition to her extensive formal education, Jill has built a solid base in design and developed a broad and well-respected knowledge of materials and creative application techniques. Jill teaches collage and painting workshops in her studio in Cobble Hill, BC and throughout BC on request.

Art Education
University of Lethbridge; University of Victoria;
Ottawa School of Art (Diploma - 1988)
Victoria College of Art (Certificate, cum laude - 1992)
Over the years Jill has attended independent workshops with Senior Artists’.

Artist Statement
Jill’s work centers on themes of life, death, rebirth, transformation and metamorphosis. Jill has a strong interest in ancient cultures, primordial images and symbols.
Applying a rich layering process of mixed media Jill’s art process involves painting, collage, drawing, scratching, stamping, subtracting… combined with a layering of imagination, intuition, memories, dreams metaphor and symbols.
Over the years I have created a lexicon of symbols that have special meaning to me that I use as metaphors for my personal visual language.
For example some of these identifiers are: chrysalis, butterfly, seed-pod, ladder, honeycomb, ruler, ABC, 123, spiral, double helix, cells, for example work together with chosen themes. These combined ideas and images in turn inform my mark making and direct the “look and feel” of the piece. This is an intuitive process with painting multiple layers of marks, text, shapes, line and colour.