Brian Wildsmith is a painter for whom art is his life. Brought up in mining village of Penistone, near Sheffield, in a mining family he won a scholarship to the Slade School Of Fine Art where he studied for three years. Brian also loves music and spent his National Service teaching music at the Royal Military School of Music, but he soon gave up teaching so that he could paint all the time.

He believes that children like good illustrations and well designed books and are much better able to understand "difficult" art than some adults will admit. He is particularly interested in picture books and says: " Picture books give an opportunity for a marriage between painting and illustrating, and the challenge of designing each page is very stimulating. I believe that a beautiful picture books of the right kind are vitally important in subconsciously forming a child's visual appreciation, which will bear fruit in later life."

Brian Wildsmith has won himself a world-wide reputation as one of the greatest living children's illustrators. He is particularly popular in the USA, Europe and Japan. In Leningrad he was responsible for all the sets and some of the costumes for the film The Blue Bird based on Maurice Maeterlinck's famous play, and in 1986, as a celebration of Britain's special relationship with Japan, Oxford University Press published Katie and the Dream-Eater written by Her Imperial Highness Princess Takamado of the Japanese Imperial Family.

Brian Wildsmith's hobbies include music, cricket (he played League cricket for Yorkshire and won cricket colours for University College, London), and tennis. He is married with four children and lives in the South of France.