About Ron Keas:
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.  As a child, he sketched and painted pictures, specializing in portraits of family members and friends.  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.  Thomas Edison was his childhood idol, and he built several working models of Edison's inventions. He built crystal radios, telegraphs, telephones, and experimented with optical devices.

Ron went to high school at Camden High in San Jose, California, majoring in English, Spanish, Art, and typing.  He won 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 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 learned how to create webpages and began 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 and a prismatic lens stereo viewer of his own design.  He sold them on his website 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.  Ron sent Arthur a set of Dinosaur 3-D stereographs along with a print of a painting titled "One Giant Leap"  The painting is one of Ron's humorous works that shows a lion tamer/astronaut on the Moon with 7 lions.  Arthur sent a copy of this picture to Neil Armstrong with the 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 landers sent back images from the surface of Mars, and they were posted on the NASA website.  Ron took these 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.

Today Ron is living 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 that can be purchased on his website.  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 Ukaih.  You can see a beautiful slideshow of his Lake County Photography on his homepage.


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. 


Ron is the winner of the 2008 Stars of Lake County Arts Award Professional

He is also named Artist of the Year in the 2008 Konocti Visitor Magazine. 
You will find many of Ron's photographs of Lake County inside the magazine, as well as the cover.

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.)

Ron is currently working on a unique new screensaver.  It contains 175 of his best photographs of Lake County, with special effects and background music.  It runs 16 mins before repeating.  A fantastic collection of pictures.

See oil paintings by Ron Keas including a new painting of Barack Obama

Visit Ron's Homepage of Photograpy

Read more about Ron