Kyle Highsmith's oil paintings are most noted for his courageous use of color. Highsmith, a prolific painter who generates an average 150 oil paintings a year, creates each painting with its own unique viewpoint, reminiscent of such Impressionist painters as Monet, Cezanne, Van Gogh, and Gauguin. Painting in the outdoors ("en plain air") set those artists apart from the academic painters of their time. And it is the "plein air" technique that Kyle Highsmith uses to create his canvases.

Spectator Magazine says of his work, "Highsmith takes real life and gives it back to us intensified."

Highsmith, a long-time Raleigh artist, maintains a studio at Artspace in downtown Raleigh. His paintings are in the collections of untold numbers of private collectors, and in the collections of the North Carolina Museum of Art, Duke University Medial Center, Progress Energy and many other corporate headquarters throughout North Carolina, as well as numerous banks and college campuses around the state. His work has been honored with a great variety of awards and honors over the years.

In doing research, I came across a catalogue titled "Paris and Southern France 1988" with little pen and ink drawings the artists had available for sale at that time. The catalogue contains an artist's statement that I believe summarizes Kyle Highsmith's passion for his chosen vocation. "These works are made of oil paint and canvas - but beyond that, beyond the colors and the images, the most basic and constant element is the intense joy with which each was done." Kyle Highsmith