Knight was born in Barbados, West Indies, then raised in Saint Louis, MO, and later Harlem.  She graduated high school in 1930 and attended Howard University in the early 1930’s.  The Depression forced Knight to pause her studies, but she went to work at the Harlem Community Art Center where she was mentored by Augusta Savage, and worked as an artist’s assistant for the WPA.

Knight has said that one of the most important individuals in her life, next to Lawrence, was Augusta Savage,

A feminist before you could name it, black nationalist, and a forceful thinker and teacher.

Gumbo Ya Ya: Anthology of Contemporary African-American Women Artists, 1995; p. 134

In 1934, she joined a WPA mural project where she met her future husband, Jacob Lawrence. They married in 1941 and a few years later, Josef Albers invited the couple to teach at Black Mountain College.  Knight taught dance, and went on to study dance with the New Dance Group, which was associated with Martha Graham, in New York.  She also studied design at the New School for Social Research with Alexei Brodovitch.

Eventually the couple moved to Seattle, WA, when Lawrence received a full-time tenured position at the University of Washington.  Knight joined the Francine Seders Gallery and held her first solo exhibition at the Seattle Art Museum in 1976.    Knight’s subjects were mostly figurative - portraits from real life and from memories - exploring the life, culture, and history of African Americans.  A retrospective of her work was held in 2003 at the Tacoma Art Museum (WA) which was titled “Never Late for Heaven: The Art of Gwen Knight”.