Landscape painter Christina Kent had been on a very different path when she took a U-turn towards a career in the fine arts. In part, the abrupt change was due to the new visuals that surrounded her during the disruption of the pandemic. Having been discouraged from studying art formally as a career, Kent had recently moved to the Bay Area from Texas in 2015 to complete a PhD in Economics at Stanford.
“I was amazed by the beauty of the California landscape, with the hills and coastline offering incredible vistas that I didn’t see in Texas. Plus, I found San Francisco had such a unique history and character that fascinated me immediately,” Kent told 48hills.
Kent met her partner, Behrad, who was also pursuing a PhD at Stanford (Kent is learning Persian and studying Persian poetry as a nod to her other half.) She says that a shared love for exploring nature inspired the couple to make the Bay Area home after graduation. They currently reside in the Potrero Hill neighborhood of San Francisco.
Kent loves both the size and diversity of the Bay Area art community and its regular access to art openings every weekend. She finds the range of artistic styles, themes, and materials that local artists use as both inspiring and thought-provoking.
“I feel like these qualities make the community very inclusive. Every artist can find their people and a venue for their work. When I left my economics career, I didn’t have a single friend in the arts, but over time, through connecting over social media and organizations like ArtSpan, I found friends and galleries that were a great fit for me,” she said.
A self-taught artist since high school, Kent considers her work to be contemplative, luminous, and atmospheric; great qualities for a painter who aims to capture the Bay Area landscape in all its nuances. Beyond the tangible nature of her subject, Kent says she is also inspired by finding meaning in the mundane moments of everyday life.
“For many years, I was focused on economics and research and in that field, we view everything through a utilitarian lens. We don’t talk about things like beauty or emotion. I think I tried to block those things out of my everyday experience, focusing instead on being productive,” she said.
Prior to becoming a painter, Kent admits to overlooking the subtleties of life, thinking they weren’t worth noticing. But then the pandemic hit, and she realized her old way of doing things wasn’t enough. She concluded that life is really just a string of mundane occurrences and that it is up to us to find the meaning inside those moments.
“I started treating this as a serious project and would spend a whole afternoon painting a lemon on my kitchen counter or going out to paint a simple tree in a field. These are things that I never would have thought to pay attention to in the past. But if you stare at a lemon for several hours, you will begin to notice it is way more complex than you originally thought. And something as simple as afternoon light hitting objects on a table can create the most marvelous show of color and shadow,” Kent said.
Painting taught Kent to see the world in this way, and while her subjects have become more elaborate over time—urban scenes of San Francisco and expansive Bay Area landscapes—that initial practice of laser-focused examination into the intricacies of the visual experience is what continues to drive her work.
As one of Kent’s favorite subjects is the cityscape of San Francisco, it is naturally the theme of her upcoming self-titled solo exhibition at Studio Gallery in San Francisco which runs from March 6 through 24, with an opening reception on March 9. Her most ambitious show to date, it will exhibit over 20 of Kent’s new paintings in a range of sizes, from 16 by 16 inches to as large as four by six feet.
“I love how the many hills of the city create this undulating landscape on which the buildings stand. When driving through the city, there are so many incredible vistas one can see, imparting a great sense of the urban landscape,” she said.
While she paints broad views of the city, as in her painting, Dusk over Russian Hill (2024, oil on canvas), she also turns a keen eye onto more intimate urban scenes. On walks around various neighborhoods from Potrero Hill to North Beach and the Outer Sunset, Kent observes the play of light and shadow amidst the bustle of activity. At night, she looks for the glow of streetlights and corner stores that illuminate dark, quiet streets “like beacons in the night.”
Though her investigations mostly capture the elements of architecture and light, Kent sometimes includes figures in a scene, for example in her painting, Closing Time, (2024) which shows restaurant customers chatting with workers as they finish up work at the end of the day. And the painting, Rain on 20th Street, (2024) contains a moody depiction of a lone figure walking their dog across a rainy street in Potrero Hill.
“I like to paint people absorbed in their activity, giving the viewer a chance to feel a sense of quiet contemplation,” she said.
Kent also wants people to feel the same love and tenderness for the Bay Area that she feels. In sharing insights she has found through the creative process, Kent hopes that when viewers engage her work they will awaken to and carry this feeling into their everyday lives.
“I’ve had several people say to me, after seeing my work, that they now see more beauty when they walk around San Francisco, seeing each street corner as a work of art. That, to me, is the greatest compliment, and speaks to the transformative power of art,” she said.
Kent chose the medium of paint specifically for the vibrancy of color, the variety of mark-making, and the ability to create the illusion of space and form on a flat surface. She goes on to articulate that she is particularly drawn to the two-dimensional surface because she was born cross-eyed. Though she has undergone surgery to correct the condition cosmetically, she says her brain never learned how to piece images together using both eyes at once.
“The result is that I’ve never been able to see in 3D. I think this is the reason why I’ve always found it easy to translate the world I see onto a flat canvas,” Kent explained.
Her preferred medium is oils for its inherently rich color and luminosity that she hasn’t found in other materials. Since capturing light is a huge part of her work, these qualities are essential for the artist. The medium’s slow drying time also allows ample opportunity for Kent to manipulate the paint after it’s been applied to the canvas, giving way to the textural and atmospheric characteristics in her work.
A day in the studio for Kent also starts slow, with a languid hike through the urban world or on a trail.
“I keep an eye out for evocative moments of light and color in the landscape, small moments that, nevertheless, take my breath away. Moving at a slow, rhythmic tempo helps to quiet my mind and lets me focus more closely on my surroundings. I often find inspiration close to home, usually in a place that I’ve seen hundreds of times, but on one particular day, when the lighting is just right, I see it in a way that is completely new, and I’m immediately inspired,” she said.
That is indeed one of her favorite things about painting—the opportunity to rediscover things that are familiar yet surprisingly hold new intrigue. Some days, Kent takes an easel with her and paints small studies directly from life, but mostly, she takes reference photos to work from.
Her studio for over a year, located in the Dogpatch neighborhood of San Francisco, is part of a large warehouse with other artists, makers, and businesses, and the space is filled with natural light. Working on canvas or panels, her process involves laying down several preparatory layers using thin amounts of paint, which allows her to assess quickly whether the color scheme and composition are working.
Then she begins applying thicker paint, starting with darker areas first, and layering lighter colors on top, to create a powerful sense of light. Kent mostly applies paint with brushes, but at times uses a palette knife for more abstract effects.
“The brush allows me to precisely control the paint, while the palette knife yields striking, spontaneous marks,” Kent said.
Using reference photos as a starting point, Kent often blurs or simplifies elements of the scene. She removes extraneous details in order to focus on the more transcendent features of an image and to accentuate the light.
“I am constantly striking a balance between simplicity and detail, asking how much information to include and how much to leave out. Some areas of the painting are sharp and resolved, while others are soft and ambiguous, creating a balance of information and energy in the composition. I know the painting is done once I feel I’ve reached this balance,” Kent said.
The evolution of her work, since she began painting 15 years ago, has taken her from the initial honing of photorealist technique and building of craft to a much more emotional approach. Kent says she began to realize in those beginnings that the mimicking process felt overly constraining and the paintings felt lifeless. Then, several years ago, she decided to try something new.
“I would use a small canvas and large brushes and even set a time limit for each painting. This forced me to stop focusing on each detail and instead consider the overall essence of what I was painting. I also began to focus more on the quality of my mark-making, embracing my brushstrokes rather than trying to hide them. I learned how to make decisive marks that are not photorealistic but instead infuse the painting with energy. This completely revolutionized my paintings, giving them an expressive quality and a liveliness that they never had before,” Kent said.
After many months of study in still-life paintings, Kent then began to expand her subject matter to the landscape. Her connection to her surroundings is palpable in the work and she says she finds this exploration to be endlessly inspiring. And through this creative portal, she feels better able to understand the place she calls home.
“I found that in painting the natural landscape, I can convey a feeling of peace and expansiveness, giving viewers a connection to these feelings even when they are in the middle of the city. And when painting the urban landscape, I can identify quiet moments of tranquility, finding a tenderness in the city that is not always obvious upon first glance. I hope that my work reflects this intimacy and the act of paying close attention to this place,” Kent said.
As her work has matured, Kent has experienced advances in her career. In 2023, she received the Emerging Artist Award from Pence Gallery in Davis, where she had her first solo exhibition. Last year, she participated in two residencies: the Chalk Hill Artist Residency in Sonoma and an international artist stint through the Pouch Cove Foundation in Newfoundland, Canada. Kent was selected as a finalist in the 2024 Campaign Collateral Competition for ArtSpan, in addition to the Juror’s Choice Award from San Francisco Open Studios. Recent exhibitions of her work include participation in the group shows, Exhale, at SHOH Gallery; Tiny, at Studio Gallery; ART FWD at Marin Museum of Contemporary Art; FourSquared, at Arc Gallery; and Enormous Tiny Art Show #36, at Nahcotta Gallery in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
The pandemic suddenly forced Kent to deeply reflect on the direction of her life for the first time. That pause led her to where she is today.
“I was almost done with my economics PhD at the time, and I realized that despite my best efforts to pursue this stable and prestigious career path, something was missing. During the first months of the pandemic, with all of my usual distractions suddenly gone, I could not ignore the deep longing I felt to get back to painting. That’s when I started my still life series, and it was as if someone had opened the floodgates of my creativity that I had been trying to hold back for so many years. I knew there was no turning back,” Kent said.
Her work became the result of a response to the uncertainty, anxiety, and distraction of our times, she says, and a recognition of a deeper connection to the preciousness and fragility of life.
“I think it’s easy to spiral into a depression considering the many challenges we face being complicated and imperfect humans trying to live together on this fragile planet. For me, I find solace and power by grounding in the present moment, focusing on the reality right in front of me, reminding myself of the miracle it is to be alive in the world today, especially for those of us living in a safe, economically prosperous country. I read news reports about the complicated issues we face in San Francisco, but when I look at the city, I also find so much beauty, so much to celebrate, and I think that is important to recognize,” Kent said.
“The Bay Area is a compelling example of our capacity to drastically change the landscape, and we can see through art history and photography the stunning changes that have occurred here in just the past 200 years. We’ve reshaped the landscape by cutting down trees for farmland, introducing invasive species, and expanding the size of the city with landfill. I recently learned that in the 1800s, there was even an initiative to flatten all of San Francisco’s 48 hills in the name of efficiency, an initiative that was only stopped when citizens banded together to preserve the land’s beauty,” she said.
As Christina Kent’s awareness of our huge and lasting impacts on our environment expands, the importance of documenting the land as it is looks and feels today is not lost on her.
“It is my hope that my work can cultivate a stronger connection to this landscape and imbue a sense of stewardship among viewers of my paintings,” Kent said. “I want to bring about a desire to protect this incredible place for future generations.”
For more information, visit ChristinaKentArt.com and view her page on Instagram.
