Kent Wallis

Artist Biography

Kent Wallis' recollections of his earliest interests in art are childhood experiments with crayon and drawing. A fourth grade teacher noticed unusual capacities and encouraged his artistic development. Unfortunately, Kent had another consuming interest, athletics. As he grew, sports monopolized his time. It would be 20 years before he returned to developing his art, prints and posters. After receiving both bachelor's and master's degrees in business, Wallis went to work for B.F. Goodrich in Akron, Ohio in 1969. From his very first day on the job, he knew that life could not possibly be fulfilling for him in a business career, but his need to support a young family made him endure for six years. By 1975, Wallis' life had become so uninvigorating that he was a slave to a desk by day and a television recluse by night.

His worried wife, while shopping in a discount department store, purchased an oil painting kit and dropped it in his lap one night. Wallis took the challenge and was hooked. Six months later he left his job and moved his growing family to Utah, where he bought a small house. They lived in the basement and turned the rest of the house into an art supply store. Three years later they were doing so well in the business that Wallis no longer had time for his own painting. When they realized what was happening, they sold the business inventory and Wallis concentrated on his art, prints and posters. The living was meager at first, but hard work paid off.

In 1988 Kent Wallis became a member of the Society of American Impressionists, an elite society of 40 of the nation's best contemporary Impressionist painters. Wallis is also one of the 10 charter members of the Northern California Society of Plein Air Painters and a member of the Plein Air Painters of America, a select group of Impressionists headquartered on Catalina Island. His works have been featured in a number of publications. His art, prints and posters are in private, corporate, and public collections throughout the country. Originally, the landscapes were primarily those of Utah. Now his works depict New Mexico, California, New England, the South, England and the northwest as well as Utah.

Kent Wallis Art, Prints and Posters Collection