I
first gained national attention for my
artwork in 1983, when local Channel 8 News,
in Salinas, did a story about me painting
oil portraits of children's Cabbage Patch
dolls. The story was passed on to the
NBC Today Show. I continued to paint
pictures inspired by the daily events in the
World News. For example, when Pope
John Paul II visited Carmel Ca, Mayor Clint
Eastwood greeted him at the Carmel Mission I
was inspired to do an oil painting of Clint
dressed as an ice-cream man, pushing a cart,
and handing the Pope three ice-cream cones-
Vanilla, Strawberry, and Chocolate. In
the background was pictured the Carmel
Mission. This light hearted fantasy
painting was published in magazines and
newspapers across America and around the
World. Riding on this wave of this
notoriety, I sold lithograph posters of his
oil painting of Clint Eastwood dressed as a
cowboy
riding
a hog. He titled it, High on the
Hog," or "Dirty Hairy Pig".
In 1985 I invented
an optical illusion he called
Echo-Vision.
I had also developed and built a folding
stereoscopic viewer that he used to view 3-D
stereographs that I photographed with my own
techniques. I set up a prehistoric terrarium
on my porch, complete with a sky with Moon,
a volcano with black light, and vegetation
lit by white and colored lights. I used this
set-up as a set to photograph Dinosaur
models in color stereo-3D. The stereographs
I made from these photo-shoots were sold
with my
stereo-viewer
on the internet. In 1986 these
stereographs drew the attention of Sir
Arthur C. Clarke online. He emailed me and
told me he attributed his study of science
to a set of black and white stereographs his
father gave him when he was a boy. He
and I became friends over the internet, and
I sent 50 stereo-viewers and Dinosaurs sets
to Arthur as gifts to the children he cared
for at Shri Lanka. During this time,
Ron traveled to the most popular National
Parks to photograph them in 3-D in order to
produce stereographs that he would sell with
stereo-viewers on the internet. In
1997, the first Mar's Rover landed on
Mars. NASA put photos taken by the
Rover camera on the internet. I
downloaded these 2-D images and selected the
ones with the angles that would allow for
3-D stereo-graphs to be made. I then
published these images to the internet, days
before NASA did the same, making me the
first to publish 3-D images of the surface
of Mars. These
stereograph
sets were also sold on the internet.
From 1986 until
2004 I lived in Ben Lomond, a small town in
the Santa Cruz Redwoods mountains.
There I photographed the Redwood's State
Parks and supplied their Visitor Centers
with stereo-images and slideshows of the
Parks.
For the next 20
years, I lived in Lake County, Ca. where he
photographed the beauty of nature with Clear
Lake as background. Today the local
hospitals, County buildings, businesses, and
homes have my large, mounted photographs of
beauty of Lake County displayed on their
walls.
In 2006, Presidential candidate Obama
drew my attention. I began
painting
oil
portraits of Obama that were inspired
by current events, and for the next 8 years
I painted his portraits and sold prints of
them on the internet. Four of my Obama
paintings were featured at the Democratic
National Convention in Denver. my
painting of the First Family was featured in
the Diversity Calendar, handed out at
Obama's first inauguration. The
HuffingtonPost
wrote, Ron Keas' Obama Paintings Make Us
Proud To Be American. My oil portrait of
Hillary sitting in the Oval Office was
responded to with a heart warming letter
from her. Most recently I was
commissioned to do a painting of President
Lincoln by the owner of Ayers Mansion in
Illinois, where President Lincoln used to
visit his friend, Augustus Ayers. My
painting of President Lincoln now hangs at
the Ayers Estate in Jacksonville, Illinois.
The Mansion owner tells me that the portrait
brings tears to the eyes of visitors.
I am also Nationally known for my oil
paintings that appeared on the front page of
the New York Times, magazines, newspapers,
and in books including
"Art
for Marilyn," "Princess
Diana in Art " and "Art for Obama."
This year I moved
to San Francisco, eager to photograph the
iconic views of the City. Photographic
prints of my art and photography are
considered to be collectibles. I will also
be producing mounted photo prints, and
panoramic images including anaglyphic 3-D
panoramic images to be viewed with red and
blue glasses supplied with the prints.
I am also still taking commissions for oil
portraits.
For 20 years, before recently moving to San
Francisco, I photographed the beauty of Lake
County, Ca. Here is a
link
to my available mounted prints.
photography of Lake
County by Ron Keas