Caroline Kent

Caroline Kent was born in Sterling, Illinois, United States. There she grew up with her mother, father, older sister Angela, and twin sister Christine. Her mother, a Mexican homemaker, and her father, an African American accountant, highly influenced Kent's work ethic. A self-described Midwesterner, Kent spent her summers growing up working summer jobs detasseling corn and dreaming of a greater life outside the borders of her small town. Caroline Kent was very close to her twin sister, Christine Leventhal, growing up. The two shared a unique method of communication which has been highly influential in Kent's artwork. Kent grew up immersed in a language of abstraction. In 1993, Kent left her hometown of Sterling to attend Illinois State University on an athletic scholarship for track and field. Previously, Kent had demonstrated little interest in art but found herself passing her time in the campus gallery. Here, her early inspirations included the art of Russian Constructivists and foreign films. Kent became mesmerized by the universality of the visual language found in art, discovering that on a canvas everyone had the same starting point, without having to pass through linguistic barriers. After her graduation in 1998, Kent joined the Peace Corps, where she lived and worked in Transylvania, Romania for two years. Here, Kent found herself inspired by the multitude of pastel colors that would later play an important part in some of her most well known works. After the Peace Corps, Kent resided in Minneapolis for 15 years,. She has also worked as an assistant professor of Art, Theory, and Practice at Northwestern University. In 2017, Kent moved to West Side Chicago, where she currently lives and works as an artist and mother of three. Kent is represented by Kohn Gallery in Los Angeles and Patron Gallery in Chicago.

Caroline Kent (born 1975) is an American visual artist based in Chicago, best known for her large scale abstract works. Inspired by her own personal experiences and her cultural heritage, Kent creates paintings that explore the power and limitations of communication.