Keith Joubert was born in 1948 in Germiston, east of Johannesburg. He studied at the Johannesburg School of Art from 1963 to 1967 after which he worked commercially for some years. From 1970, Keith Joubert painted African subjects and the environment. He travelled frequently throughout Southern Africa, but spent most of his time in the Okavango Swamps, Botswana, where he had a houseboat and a studio camp at Linyanti in the northern part. His studio, like his bedroom, was a tent during winter and a simple tarpaulin during the hot summer months. His closeness with the creatures which inhabited his world came from hours in their company.
Joubert’s seemingly effortless renditions of Africa with their contemporary vision, impeccable draughtsmanship and tonality gain rapidly increasing acknowledgement internationally. His works play on the subtle inter-relationships between different facets of the ecosystem where the diminutive and seemingly innocuous creatures are as essential as the larger animals which evolved within Africa. Joubert also developed a deep fascination with indigenous human cultures which have successfully co-existed with their natural environment for generations.
Joubert’s work hangs in many corporate and private collections globally. He is represented in the Rupert Museum, an important collection of South African art, and his painting 'Paradise Crossing' is in the National Museum of Wildlife Art collection in Jackson Hole, Wyoming and was included in their 2005 exhibition and catalogue Wildlife Art for a New Century II. He exhibited widely, including with the Tryon Gallery in London, Stremmel Gallery in Texas and Everard Read gallery in South Africa. Prince Philip, Duke of Ediburgh, wrote the foreword for Joubert's portfolio of limited edition prints, Birds of the Waterways of Southern Africa, published by Sappi in 1991.