Exhibitions and Awards:

2010: The Village Gallery, Maui.
Annual shows every year since 2000

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2007: "Witness to Time."
The Maui Arts and Cultural Center. A multi-artist exhibit featuring 19th Century paintings by the Maui missionary Edward Bailey, along with recent landscape paintings by eleven contemporary Maui artists. I contributed three paintings.

2006 - 2007: "Precious Resources - The Land and the Sea."
The Hawaii State Art Museum, Honolulu. A multi-artist exhibit; my 2003 painting of "Iao Valley," part of the state collection, was featured in the show.

2004: "Malama Wao Akua 'o Maui Hikina."
Viewpoints Gallery, Maui. Art contest in support of the East Maui Watershed Partnership. My painting "Cloudforest" won First Prize.

The Schaefer Portrait Challenge.
Hawaii's state-wide juried portrait contest, held every three years at the Maui Arts and Cultural Center. My work was featured in both 2003 and 2006. In 2003, my self-portrait in pastel won the Marion Freeman People's Choice Award.

2000, 2001: Lahaina Poster Contest Exhibition.
Annual multi-artist juried show on Maui. A pastel, "Old Lahaina Courthouse," won the Best of Show award in 2001, and an oil, "Shade," won both the Best of Show and People's Choice awards in 2000.

2001: Arts for the Parks Top 100.
Jackson, Wyoming. A national, juried painting contest. My painting "Kipahulu from Kuloa Point" was accepted into the Top 100.

Art Maui:
An annual, juried show at the Maui Arts and Cultural Center.
My work was featured in the show each year from 1999 - 2004, and in 2007.
Over the years, three of my paintings were purchased from this show by the Hawaii State Foundation on Culture and the Arts.

1991 - The University of Michigan School of Art.
Received the Bachelor of Fine Arts Award (one award per graduating class based on exceptional achievement).

About Kit Gentry

Originally from Michigan, Kit Gentry received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Michigan School of Art. After a 16-year residence on Maui, Kit now lives near Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee, but continues to produce landscape paintings with island themes, inspired by his experiences throughout Hawaii and French Polynesia.
He works primarily with oils, pastels and a variety of drawing tools, with an emphasis on fine craftsmanship and the use of archival materials to ensure the longevity of his work. He's found that certain subjects lend themselves to the qualities of certain mediums, so the choice of subject can often influence his choice of working materials.
Most of his pictures feature landscape or other natural elements as subject matter. Whether depicting a cloud hovering over a Maui pasture, or hot lava flowing near the coast of Hawaii, Kit's subjects are typically invested with an otherworldly quality that often suggests an association with his interest in legend and folklore. Despite this imaginative element in his work, he consistently pursues disciplined realism from an observation of nature, striving to capture his subjects faithfully in order to preserve their real-life credibility. .