Ron Keas was born in Salinas California in 1943.  At an early age his creativity began to show.  He studied violin beginning in the 3rd grade and continued through high school.  He also learned to play guitar and keyboards.  As a child, he sketched and painted pictures, specializing in portraits of friends and family.  He built his own darkroom at the age of 12, and took pictures of people and nature.  His favorite books were about artists and inventors.  He built crystal radios, telegraphs, telephones, and experimented with optical devices.

 Ron attended Camden High in San Jose, California, majoring in English, Spanish, and Art, winning many awards for his oil paintings in High School art shows.  After graduating from Camden High, he went to San Jose City College for 2 years, majoring in Art and Photography.  He left college early to join the Navy, and became a Naval Photographer after completing the Naval School of Photography in Pensacola Florida. His first assignment was in the Navy’s Mobile Photo Unit as a motion picture photographer and later on the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Hancock off the coast of Viet Nam, where he worked as a photo lab technician. 

     Ron's first big break as an artist came in 1983, when the Cabbage Patch Dolls were so popular the stores couldn't keep them in stock.  Ron latched onto the idea of painting oil portraits of Cabbage Patch Dolls.  The local news channel 8, in Salinas did a TV news story about Ron's Cabbage Doll Paintings, and the story made it to Network News on the NBC Today show. National attention to Ron's art came around again in 1987, when Pope Paul II visited Carmel California.  Ron's oil paintings of the Pope at Mission Carmel appeared on Network television, and in newspapers and magazines around the World.

     In 1994 Ron began building his own web pages, and showing his art to the World via the Internet.  At the same time, he and his wife Donna traveled to the major National Parks, and photographed them in 3-D, thus reviving the lost art of stereo photography in the form of color stereographs.  He sold them on his website, along with a folding stereo-viewer of his own design for the next 10 years, and became known World Wide as an expert and consultant in 3-D photographic techniques.  Among the people who took interest in Ron's 3-D photography was Arthur C. Clarke.  He told Ron that his stereographs were among the best 3-D he had ever experienced.   Arthur shared a print of one of Ron’s paintings to Neil Armstrong.  The painting titled "One Giant Leap” was one of Ron's humorous works that shows a lion tamer/astronaut on the Moon with a pride of lions.  Along with the print Arthur included message; "You never told us about this".

       The Internet has been a great launch pad for Ron's ideas and creations ever since.  In the year 2000, the Mars Rovers sent back images from the surface of Mars, and they were posted on the NASA website.  Ron took those images and combined certain views to make the first 3-D stereo images of Mars to be published to the internet.  This made the front page of the Santa Cruz Sentinel.

     Ron lives with his wife in Lake County California, dividing his time between photographing nature around Clear Lake, and doing oil paintings.  He has produced 3 nature DVDs.  One is of the Redwoods, and two cover the four seasons of Lake County California.  Ron's photography is featured on the covers and inside many or the finest Lake County Magazines, and is displayed on the new Lake County billboard on highway 101 in Ukiah.  You can see a beautiful slideshow of his Lake County Photography on his website.

     For the past 20 years Ron's favorite art subject has been Marilyn Monroe.  His paintings of Marilyn can be viewed on his website.  One of them is featured in the new "Marilyn in Art" coffee table book by Roger Taylor, and also appears on the back cover.  Ron’s paintings of Princess Diana are featured in a similar book titled “Diana in Art” Both books are available from Amazon.com

     Today, Ron is concentrating his creativity on a collection of oil paintings of Barack Obama.  These paintings can be seen on Ron’s website at http://www.keasart.com where is offering collectible prints of the paintings.   Some of his original oil paintings of Barack Obama will be on display at the Manifest Hope Gallery in Denver, CO held at the Democratic National Convention (August 24th – August 28th, 2008.

Ron Keas
PO Box 474
5805 Arden Drive
Lucerne, CA 95458
Phone 707-274-8786

Websites
http://www.keasart.com
http://www.3dviewmax.com
 

As a fine artist, Ron's favorite subject to paint has been Marilyn Monroe, and recently he had the honor of not only having one of his paintings included in the new "Marilyn in Art" coffee table book by Roger Taylor, but also on the back cover. This year,  Ron's paintings of Princess Diana will be in a similar book being published in Great Britain. 
 
 

UPDATE:

The new book:" Diana in Art", compiled by Mem Mehmet is now on bookshelf's around the World.  Four of Ron's oil paintings of Princess Diana will be featured in the book. ( Mem Mehmet also compiled the recent "Madonna in Art" coffee table book.)

Black History Month 2010 Poster By artist/photographer Ron Keas

In honor of Black History month, Artist/Photographer Ron Keas posed in front of all 18 of the President Obama paintings he created over the past year. This image will be available soon on Ron's website www.keasart.com as a limited edition Black History Month 2010 poster.
Ron Keas was born in Salinas California in 1943. His talent for art began in the 1st grade when he began drawing animals and birds by looking at photographs. After grade school, he moved with his family to San Jose, California. By the time he was in High School, he preferred to draw portraits of people in pencil and charcoal.  His favorite artists were Rembrandt, Dali, and Norman Rockwell.
In 1960 John Kennedy was on the Presidential campaign trail.  Ron was excited to hear that Senator Kennedy was going to give a speech in downtown San Jose. As the Kennedy motorcade slowly drove down 1st street, a very tanned, smiling JFK was standing in the back of a convertible, reaching out and shaking hands. Ron reached out his hand and made eye contact with Kennedy as he received a firm handshake. This experience was an inspirational moment for Ron.  Back at high school art class the next day, Ron began his first oil portrait. It was a painting of John Kennedy. During that year, Ron painted several oil portraits of Kennedy, selling a couple of them, and giving the others to friends. As his skill in painting portraits improved, he dreamed of someday painting the official White House Portrait of the newly elected President Kennedy. 
In 1963, after a year at San Jose City College, Ron joined the Navy, where he attended the Naval School of Photography in Pensacola Florida. He was a Naval Photographer for 3 years during the beginning of the Viet Nam War   Ron has been an Artist/Photographer ever since. During the 1990's he became known nation wide for his Marilyn Monroe oil portraits, and later for his portraits of Princess Diana.  Between 1994 and 2000, Ron traveled to National Parks with his wife to photograph the Natural Wonders in stereo 3-D. He produced color stereograph sets and sold them over the internet along with a prismatic lens stereo viewer that he designed and built.  Among the admirers of Ron’s 3-D photography was Sir Arthur C. Clarke, who became a good friend via email and exchanged ideas on 3-D photography techniques. 
In 2002, Ron and his wife moved to Lucerne, California in Lake County California.  .Since then he has become very well known in the County for his nature photography. His photographs appear regularly in local magazines, and advertising. In 2008 he won the Lake County Stars Award for Professional Arts. This year his photography is featured in the Lake County Calendar. 
When Barack Obama began campaigning for the Presidency, Ron was inspired to begin a series of oil paintings depicting Barack Obama in many situations, some real, like Obama with Oprah, and some fantasy, like baby Obama on the beach in Hawaii, discovering a sandcastle shaped like the White House.  Ron's personal favorite is the first Obama painting he did titled: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow.  In the background is the Lincoln Memorial Statue, which represents “Yesterday”.  Standing proudly in the foreground is President Obama, representing “Today”, and in the middle is the silhouette of a child saluting Lincoln's statue. The pose of the child is reminiscent of JFK Juniors salute at his father’s funeral procession. This image represents “Tomorrow.” 
The artist Shepard Fairey, who created the red and blue Hope Poster for Obama's campaign, invited Ron to show three of his Obama paintings at the Manifest Hope Gallery in Denver during the DNC. These paintings appeared in magazines, and on the front page of the New York Sunday Times.   They are also included in Shepard Fairey's new book "Art For Obama".  Currently Ron is working on a portrait of Shepard Fairey.
Ron's painting of the First Family appeared in the August page of the Diversity Inaugurating Calendar. It was used for the month of August: Obama's birth month.  To date, Ron has completed 18 oil paintings of President Obama and plans to continue to add to his collection of the "Most Obama paintings done by one artist". .
 Ron began painting a portrait of Ted Kennedy just hours before hearing about the Senator's passing. The background of this painting is a copy of one of Ted Kennedy's paintings of the dock at the Hyannis Poet Compound. In the foreground Ron painted Ted at the helm of his yacht, sailing out to sea. This painting will be in a Ted Kennedy memorial edition of the Cape Code Life magazine this Summer. 
“Today at age 66, Ron still dreams of painting the official White House portrait, only this time he hopes it can be of President Obama.  If this doesn’t happen, he is still happy.  In a recent interview Ron commented on what this past year has meant to him: Art is its own reward, however my greatest reward has been to have prints of my President Obama paintings in homes across America.