Kent R. Wallis, born in Ogden, Utah, began his formal art endeavors rather late compared to most other artists.
He received his Bachelors' and Masters' degrees from Utah State University in Business Administration in 1969; after which he was employed by the B. F. Goodrich Company in Akron, Ohio.
He worked for six years in the fields of marketing and finance. During that 6-year experience, personal feelings kept reoccuring that his career was not fulfilling his creative needs.
With his sense of frustration growing, in January of 1975 he renewed an old hobby that had been abandoned years earlier but which he had enjoyed during his young life--drawing and painting. He did so in an effort to sharpen his creative faculties and give more purpose to his free time.