Pro Hart was a child of the harsh outback, born and raised at a rundown sheep station, Larloona, in far western NSW.

A hard, enamelled deep blue, domed sky stretched as far as the eye could see. This quintessentially Australian image remained a dominant theme in Hart's prolific painting career.

Hart died yesterday morning, aged 77, after suffering painful and debilitating motor neurone disease. His family had decided to cease his medication last Friday. He died at home in Broken Hill.

So, what is one to make of an artist whose entry in Who's Who lists his hobbies as body-building, pistol shooting and organ music? A dictionary definition of a chameleon is a small lizard able to change colour to suit surroundings; a variable or inconstant person. A maverick is defined as an unbranded calf. Both descriptions are apposite to the life and work of Kevin Charles Hart. He was imbued with an ingrained identification with the dusty world of the far country.

Hart was, in the commercial definition, Australia's most successful artist. The quality of his talent is open to question. He was rubbished by most critics and rejected by many galleries, both commercial and public. Time magazine's Australian art critic Robert Hughes thought Hart's paintings "awful beyond belief".

Yet the respected critic Elwyn Lynn, reviewing Hart for The Australian, did not write him off. "To call Pro Hart a curious artistic phenomenon might seem to give his work too much importance; but despite the taunts of the avant-garde and, after a high-priced selling show, he smiles all the way to his gooey varnish pots. "At least his eclecticism is Australian. He wraps the local image up in billows of cotton wool and he satisfies a need for the blinkered vision which surrounds Australia."

As can be seen, Hart was articulate and could write well, no doubt a tribute to his mother's early training. Aged 18 in 1946, he began work in the mines. For 15 years he drove an electrically powered loco. It was a grim existence, enlivened by mateship. It was in the mines that he acquired the nickname Pro(fessor) for his wide general knowledge....

As he aged, Hart grew a little cranky. He hated unions and the Labor Party and the Hawke and Keating Labor governments, declaring them to be a mob of Marxists. Paradoxically, he liked Bob Hawke. Consistency was of no concern to Hart. He donated paintings to assist Pauline Hanson's legal defence fund. He became a devout Christian and joined a fundamentalist church. "I trust God for inspiration," he said...

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