California native Robert Schaar served as a Navy staff artist during the Korean War, and finished up his rather unconventional apprenticeship traveling and studying around Europe and back again to Southern California. He is one of an elite group of artists who make up the NASA Art Program, and his widely collected artwork is also on permanent display at the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum, The Pentagon, NASA Space Museum at Cape Canaveral, U.S. Air Force Academy, Saudi Arabia Royal Air Force headquarters in Riyadh, and the Kentucky Derby Museum. His dynamic, colorful work has been aptly described as "deceptively loose and spontaneous." After over 20 years heading his own Schaar Galleries in Laguna Beach, California, he closed shop in 2009 to more fully focus on his own work in a private studio just down the street.