Trent Burleson was born in Charlotte, NC in 1952. He was selected as a high school student to attend the North Carolina Governor's School for Gifted and/or Talented Students. He graduated from the Philadelphia College of Art (now University of the Arts) with a Bachelor's degree in Painting and received a Masters Degree in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design, where he began teaching various painting and drawing classes. He served as the Chief Critic of the school's European Honors Program in Rome in 1985. His paintings have been widely exhibited and are part of many private, corporate, and public collections, including the Mint Museum Of Art in Charlotte, NC. A landscape painting by Professor Burleson was used as the cover for the great American writer Raymond Carver's last book, "Where I am Calling From" in 1988. The art critic Edward Sozanski wrote of Burleson's paintings "he's able, through light and color, to transform the mundane into the exceptional."