Keith attended Kansas City Art Institute and University of Illinois in Chicago. He studied under Wilbur Niewald and print making with Bill McKim. He worked as a landscape designer for 25 years while raising a family. Residing in Excelsior Springs, Missouri, Keith painted every day after retirement, working in oil, acrylic, watercolor and mixed media. 

In Keith’s words, “Spinoza thought that painting was largely a product of the body. I can see where that might be true, but most of what I do seems to be guided by what might be called the hungry eye. Trying to arrange a painting half as good as nature arranges itself seems to me to be worth doing.”