Christopher Pyett was born in Melbourne in 1943 and grew up in Tasmania where he attended the Tasmanian School of Art, majoring in painting under Jack Carington Smith from 1961 to 1964. He studied colour with Dorothy Stoner, Edith Holmes and George Davis. He held his first solo exhibition in 1966 and his work has subsequently been exhibited numerous times both in solo and group shows. In 1976 Pyett won the prestigious Georges prize with a painting that now hangs in the Warrnambool Regional Gallery. Pyett's work is represented in many private and public collections around Australia.

Pyett has held several academic posts being appointed Head of the Department of Fine Art at Chisholm Institute of Technology in 1986 and Associate Professor of Fine Art at Monash University in 1990.

Apart from painting, Pyett has been commissioned to design more than twenty tapestries for public and private collections. These include The Creation (1996) a large tapestry which hangs above the altar in the chapel of the Community of the Holy Name, Cheltenham, Victoria and Morning Skies (1997), a monumental tapestry for a private home composed of a series of ten smaller panels, each depicting the morning sky on a different day. Pyett has also been commissioned to design tapestries for a Christian school, a Buddhist temple, BHP, CSIRO, and Latrobe University.

Christopher and Barbara live and work in Pearcedale. For many years his paintings have been inspired by classical music and colour. Pyett uses classical music as a cornerstone for his interpretation of the landscape and in particular the more ephemeral and romantic aspects of the landscape.

Working almost exclusively in gouache his paintings are usually small and intense. He builds his paintings that start with a theme and then are slowly orchestrated into beautiful gems of colour.

His inspirations include the sea and the sky, the inventiveness of Beethoven and the orchestration of Tchaikovsky.