Born 27th January 1932 at Hamilton NSW, Kevin as a child loved to draw. Kevin has been painting 'full time' or professionally since 1977. He has unbound enthusiasm for painting Australian bush and scenes. He has a great knowledge of his subjects, having travelled widely including much time spent in Australia's high country. Here he has watched and sketched the Brumbies, the annual muster and the cool running mountain streams. Letting the light play its impact on the natural setting is his forte.

Outback musters with the heat, dust and flies are all part of it. But most importantly in all of his work he captures, with great detail, the light. Kevin says, one of the best parts of being a landscape artist is the challenge of light. In fact Sir Hans Heysen said "The greatest challenge is that of light slanting across the gum tree." Kevin goes on to say...Not only light across gum trees, I grapple with light across the whole landscape! With sunrises and sunsets the challenge of obtaining the correct light grows.

Kevin has found that everything in sunlight has warm and cooler shadows. Instead of painting in the sun itself like Van Gogh did Kevin prefers to squint into the light and paint the effect the sunlight has on the whole scene - each tree, each animal. Kevin, like many landscape artists, goes on field trips looking for new subjects to paint. One such trip to the Flinders Ranges provided him with a perfect painting.

He was amazed at the colours of the mountains. The blues, pinks and purples. They were unbelievable. In the foothills looking up at the rim of the mountain the spring colours of the foliage and the grass seemed to compliment the colour of the mountain perfectly. Complimentary colours enhance each other - one of the laws of the "colour wheel". This wheel is used in art schools to teach students about combining colour. It forms the basis for the use of colour in paintings.

Kevin often says that the best examples of colour and light are painted by mother nature herself. An example of this was in midsummer when he was watching a herd of cattle being driven through bush just after crossing the Broken River. As each beast came up the rise, steam was rising from their wet hides. This combined with sunlight filtering down through the tall gum trees forming rays of softly coloured light almost like a rainbow in the bush. The golden light, tinged with pink - orange, streaming down through the summer foliage has been the inspiration for many of Kevin's paintings.

It is the filtered sunlight, filtered by thousands of trembling leaves that Kevin is able to capture so well. Have you ever been in the bush after rain? Have you enjoyed that special aroma of wet earth, native shrubs and damp bark - when the colours of the eucalypt trunks seem to fairly glow? To Kevin this is magic stuff! Everything has been washed clean and the rising steam forms rays of sunlight. It seems to him that the colours of the earth and the trees and all of the bush seem to double in intensity after rain. He suggests the next time it rains, take the trouble to see the bark of an 'old man gum'. It is not only the colour that excites him, there are other senses intensified by rain. Consider touch, sound and smell. You can smell the rain in the air even before it arrives. Just to hear rain drumming on a tin roof or thudding gently on the earth or sand reminds one of a special place. After rain everything you touch feels different- good - clean - brimming with life.

These different experiences enable Kevin to paint brighter, fresher paintings because he has experienced and witnessed the changing light and colour in the bush. Kevin Best still travels over this vast continent in search of scenes that his deeply developed insight of nature allow him to immortalize for you in his paintings. Be it a serene river bed, the dust, heat and harshness of the outback, a gnarled gum tree, or the light filtering through the canopy of trees, all these kaleidoscopic changing scenes urge his talents.