 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".
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.
He is also named Artist of the Year in the 2008 Konocti
Visitor Magazine.
UPDATE:
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
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