Keith’s art interest started back in 1965 when he would collect comic strips of his favorite super hero’s and paste them in a scrap book. He disrupted study hall one day by coloring in a dark area of a drawing, the sound of his scraping pencil drew the attention of the entire study hall.


His freshmen year in high school he and his brother, George, created a comic book with ditto masters that they were able to sell out of.


His first set piece was a picket fence that he constructed by tearing apart a pallet with a hammer. At this time he was working as Christmas help at Macy’s in Bayfair Mall. He learned many ways to paint mannequins or boxes black or white, all while watering hundreds of poinsettias.


In college he was the first graphic editor to lobby the journalism department to allow commercial art students to present cartoons instead of articles for class credit. He also introduced computer generated comics to the school paper. Each commercial arts student created one hand drawn cartoon and one computer generated cartoon using the Mac programs freehand and Adobe Illustrator.


Keith has taught art at the Legion of Honor and the De Young Museum, done model repair for the San Francisco Opera, set construction, painting and design for the American Conservatory graduate program, and was instrumental in bring professional pay to students at the Bayview-Hunterspoint opera house for mural work and acting.




Keith’s list of accomplishments include working at Percita Eyes Mural Art Center and air brush study with Crista Shandra, murals in the Bayview-Hunterspoint and Alemany housing project, set design and building for the Bayview-Hunterspoint opera house, scenic painting for the Shakespeare at the beach acting company at Stenson beach and illustration work for Infinity Limited Literary Magazine. His favorite work includes being a teachers aide at City College in San Francisco in the theater production department. Some of the productions they did were The Crucible, 3 Penny opera, and Merry Wives of Winsor.


Locally, Keith is contracted for a small community theater group called The Chanticleers Theater. The productions in which he provided sets included 10 Little Indians, I do I do, and Brighton Beach Memoirs, which is in progress.


When asked why he likes theater work he explains that he likes creating a fantasy world from nothing.