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 by a phone call from Jay Leno 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.  The outpouring of love and gratitude from folks on the phone and by email about my artwork has made this the best year of my life.”