Joanne Kent American, b. 1942

Joanne Kent has created introspective, tactile works since the 1980s, transforming contemporary abstraction through her exploration of memory and materiality. In her practice, Kent layers oil paint with wax and other materials, referencing the legacies of modernism and post-war abstraction while dissolving boundaries between painting and sculpture. She develops her compositions through a purely intuitive process, building each work layer by layer to introduce subtle dimensional shifts. Humming with a quiet tension between formal minimalism and surface maximalism, her works activate the spaces they inhabit with an otherworldly sense of presence and stillness. Her bold application of oil paint results in disarming textural feats, inviting a wholly corporeal viewing experience. Kent’s expansive body of work, whether small paintings or monumental wall-based constructions, culminates as an elegant reflection on material, transformation, and immediacy, securing her legacy as an innovative voice in Washington, D.C.’s artistic landscape. This sustained commitment to process and material investigation reveals an artist deeply engaged with visual intuition and the evolving possibilities of abstraction.

Joanne Kent (b. 1942, Milaca, Minnesota) received her BFA and MFA in painting from the University of Minnesota (1976, 1978). Kent has exhibited extensively, most recently in the 2024 group exhibition Beyond Surface at Pazo Fine Art in Washington, DC. She has additionally been showcased at Gallery K in Washington, D.C., Parish Gallery in Washington, D.C., Intervistas, Between the Bridges in Brooklyn, NY, the District of Columbia Arts Center in Washington, D.C., Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts in Wilmington, DE, and the Jones Troyer Fitzpatrick Gallery in Washington, D.C.

Public and private institutions that hold works by the artist include the DC Art Bank, Booz Allen Hamilton and the Barlow-Gilotty Collection. Kent is the recipient of several awards and grants, including a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant (1987), a Gottlieb Foundation Grant (1992) and multiple awards from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities (1993, 1997, 2020, 2021). She lives and works in Washington, DC.