Jim Kent currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.  He is retired , and has begun to paint again after a career in international business.

Jim attended Albion College in Michigan, where he studied economics and  business; he also studied art and oil painting .  He was encouraged  to continue his interest in painting by Vernon Bobbitt, Head of the Albion Art Department.  Over the years , Jim dabbled in painting, but began again in earnest in the fall of 2007.

His painting has been influenced and inspired by experiences encountered while living and traveling in Europe, South America, Asia, the American Southwest, California, and Michigan.

He has also been influenced by his great aunt, an artist who worked in watercolors and sculpture; and by  his mother, Catharine Kent, who spent 25 years living in New Mexico where she became an accomplished painter of American Southwest landscapes, scenes from her travels in South America, and scenes from the Indian Pueblos in New Mexico.