James Kent - Biography and Artist's Statement

I have always been creative. Born in Texas, I grew up in a small town in northeast Ohio near the shore of Lake Erie. Creative interests - art, music, and photography - were favored parts of my life from an early age. After receiving a Bachelor's degree in Mathematics from Hiram College in Hiram, Ohio and a Master's in Operations Research from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, I settled in New Jersey in 1981 upon accepting a position as a telecommunications analyst with Bell Laboratories. As my time became crowded with the demands and diversions of adult life, I realized that my creative side was not as close to the surface of my life as it had been, and I missed that. So I decided to begin making changes that would ultimately allow me to create art full time. In early 1994, I left Bell Communications Research and immersed myself in painting for more than a year. Now, I balance my time painting in my home-based studio in Oceanport, teaching abstract painting, and working as a telecommunications systems engineer.

More than a decade ago, I moved away from creating geometric constructed paintings to painting in the lyrical abstract expressionist style. For me, this has been a way to expand my artistic language and revel in the possibilities of paint. The paintings are "non-representational", meaning they are not meant to portray anything in the world we see around us. They require careful study on the part of the viewer, not just a quick glance. A long look will reveal details, textures, and perhaps the evocation of an object or a landscape.


To see James Kent's paintings click here.

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