Kent Mikalsen is a professionally trained visual artist whose multi-dimensional work also includes experience as a designer and concept artist in architecture, visual effects for feature films, animation and entertainment park design.
He grew up in NYC and completed his education in Florida, earning an MFA in sculpture from the University of Florida. During graduate school, Kent was considered a rising star. He was selected for prestigious national and regional shows, permanent collections in major museums and received commissions for large outdoor sculptures.
At the height of his promising career as an artist, Kent became disillusioned with his unbridled and unfulfilling personal life. Seeking more meaning, he moved into an ashram for ten years to study yoga, meditation and other transformational practices. This experience had a profound effect on his inner life and his art. His work became a meditation on the nature of non-physical reality. An unresolved dialogue of opposites still remains between his pursuit of the ethereal and his large, often heavy, sculptures. This paradox still resides at the core of his work.
Kent lives in western Massachusetts and has studios there and in Florida.
Art Website: www.kentmikalsen.com
Design Website: www.kentmikalsenstudio.com
Instagram: www.instagram.com/kent_mikalsen
Facebook: www.facebook.com/kent.mikalsen
KENT MIKALSEN
ARTIST’S STATEMENT 11/23/21
I like being dirty. Wearing a patina of dirt and sweat is evidence of a day well spent in my studio.
Even as a young guy playing baseball, dirt on my uniform meant I had been in the game.
I like wielding tools that cut, shape, grind and smooth rough materials into objects of beauty, grace and elegance.
I like having a physical relationship with the art I create. Even my paintings are a map of the physical act of their creation.
I like making sculpture that commands the space it occupies, art with presence and weight. I am not a conceptual artist.
I like art that penetrates into my heart and reminds me of my humanness and complexity.
I like being a purveyor of works that reach out to others and remind them of their uniqueness and value.
I like art that challenges our perceptions about the nature of reality.
I like being in the game.
KENT MIKALSEN
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