Presence
Magnesite, 45″x 19″x 7″, 1947
Adaline Kent was very much of her time in every way in none more than the advantage she took of the twentieth century artist’s freedom to find the substance and the reason for creative expression everywhere.
Art of the other times, places and people, curiously formed or colored objects from nature, the inherent qualities and accidental appearances of things and materials, the forms she discovered and those she created, the varied aspects of the world about her, all served her art, and were transmuted, according to her lively fancy and creative need, into a personal statement. She gathered around here, and lived and worked among objects from many parts of the world and things of everyday life and of nature in which her sensitive eye and inventive mind recognized an art quality.
Travel in the mountains of the West and over the stark earth-toned landscape of Greece alike could nourish her imagination and contribute to her creation of new forms. Her work comprehends and expresses all these sources of creative invention, and at the same time remains her alone, completely original and personal.
-Grace L. McCann Morley
Director, san Francisco Museum of Art