Earning recognition as a young artist and continuing to grow professionally, Ramon Kelley, credits Russian artist Nicolai Fechin as a major influence on his strong figural painting. Kelley says "there is no more beautiful landscape in the world than that of the female figure" (Southwest Art 5/98).

He spent four years in the Navy and then got a scholarship to the Colorado Institute of Art in Denver to train as an illustrator. But his favorite class was the life-drawing class taught by Charlie Dye, one of the founders of the Cowboy Artists of America. After the birth of his first child, he went to work as a catalog illustrator but continued painting at night. A gallery in Taos began carrying his work, and...