ABOUT THE NBC ARTIST SERIES

NBC Chairman Ken Fergeson has a lifelong interest in art and a personal mission to support artists and share the beauty of it with as many people as possible. Almost every year since 2003, the bank has commissioned a prominent artist with Oklahoma ties to produce an original piece of art for the NBC Artist Series. The series also has included a calendar and a book, numbered and signed prints and posters the bank has given away to customers. The original pieces are part of NBC’s art collection. Participating artists have included Mike Larsen, Harold T. Holden, Jean Richardson, Kenny McKenna, Otto Duecker III, Mitsuno Ishii Reedy, Benjamin Harjo Jr., Mikel Donahue, Brent Learned, Tom Palmore, Carol Beesley, Bert D. Seabourn, Sonya Terpening, Poteet Victory and Jeff Dodd. Read more about them and see their NBC work here.

2022

“Little Brother of War” by Starr Hardridge

36 x 48 inches, Acrylic on Venetian plaster on canvas

Long before the settlers arrived in Indian Territory, the ancient people of Mississippian Mound Builder Cultures occupied what is now known as Oklahoma. The Southeast Ceremonial Complex was one of the great civilizations before Europe’s imperialist expansion. Complex trade centers were located from Spiro Mounds in eastern Oklahoma, across the Eastern seaboard from the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes. At these sites, stickball emerged as one of the first mass cultural sports in North America. Tribal nations cultivated national teams and the outcome of games settled diplomatic disputes, avoiding unnecessary military campaigns. Because of this significance, stickball became known as the “Little Brother of War.” Starr Hardridge’s Little Brother of War illustrates the very first stickball game between the land animals and sky animals in a struggle for balance, a battle of earth and sky. The composition reflects the duality of mankind, a running theme of twin imagery ever-present in Hardridge’s work. Stickball has been sustained across millennia and remains a highly competitive sport today. Seven of the tribes in Oklahoma maintain national teams and some communities play stickball as a ritual. When played socially, the game can include men and women, young and old; it is similar to combining rugby and lacrosse.  

Hardridge’s work has been exhibited at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, and his work is included in the art collection of the Oklahoma State Capitol building. Starr Hardridge grew up in Oklahoma where he is an enrolled member of the Muscogee Nation. Southeastern woodland beadwork inspires Hardridge’s artistic technique, and his meticulous dot-by-dot application evokes beaded artwork. Hardridge received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Savannah College of Art and Design and also studied at the Nedaii/Verdon Atelier of Decorative Painting in Penne De Agenais France.

2021

“Homecoming” by John Newsom

84 x 60 inches, Oil on canvas

John Newsom thrived in his Enid, Oklahoma, upbringing but always yearned to travel and explore the world as a painter. Homecoming represents a visual return to his experiences in Oklahoma. He currently lives in Brooklyn, NY, with his wife and their two children.

After receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Rhode Island School of Design and a Master of Fine Arts from New York University, he had his first New York exhibition in 1995, when he was only 25. Since that first show, his work has been exhibited in the United States, across Europe, and in Japan. His paintings are included in the permanent collections of numerous public institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, NY; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT; and the Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence, RI. Articles and reviews of his work have appeared in Artforum, Art in America, Flash Art, The New Yorker and The New York Times, among others.

Memories of driving for miles as a teenager along the open roads and prairies of Oklahoma inspired Newsom’s 2021 painting, Homecoming. Newsom said:

I wanted to create an iconic image using timeless motifs from the Oklahoma landscape. The bison is a strong, yet contemplative animal from the plains. The scissor-tailed flycatcher is the state bird of Oklahoma, and the Indian Blanket is the state wildflower. Combined together these images become the perfect chorus. It is with great sincerity and reverence for the natural landscape of Oklahoma and its inhabitants, that this very meaningful and special painting has come into being.

2020

“Lady Justice Series” by dg smalling

60-inch by 53-inch acrylic on birch panel

“Lady Justice Series” by Oklahoma City artist dg smalling is the 16th commissioned painting in the NBC Oklahoma Artist Series. It continues the bank’s and Chairman Ken Fergeson’s longtime support of the arts.

It is the first in smalling’s series of works derived from the Operation Lady Justice series used by the U.S. Department of Interior’s multi-agency law enforcement initiative combatting violence against women. He designed it to capture the vibrancy of Lady Justice featured as a Native American woman; she is holding a shield and cloaked in a blanket representing day and night.

smalling, a Citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, was born in Waxahachie, Texas, spent his first few years around Idabel and Haworth and by the age of 8 had traveled to Switzerland, Cameroon, and South Africa with his parents, who were missionaries. He had access to exceptional art programs in Commonwealth and international schools. He graduated from high school in Johannesburg, South Africa, and then attended the University of Oklahoma. His work focused on crisis management in the Balkans.

Several exhibitions have featured smalling’s art, including Epcot Disney World, Oklahoma’s Centennial Show, the Grand Palais in Paris, France, and National Museum of the American Indian in Washington. The artist’s commissioned work includes portraits of U.S. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, U.S. Congressman Tom Cole and T. Boone Pickens.

“Justice herself, is uplifting. … Justice is a strong woman,” smalling said. “I enjoy the colors and the vibrancy of Lady Justice featured as a Native American woman holding a shield with a powerful interlocking-arms design, armed with a lance/pen, and cloaked in a blanket representing day and night. She invokes the ideal of community that teaches an individual that 50 percent responsibility is to your people and 50 percent responsibility is to yourself and that lessons along the way are universal in life, not just afforded to one group of people.”

2019

“Frontier Rodeo Company Yearlings” by Jeff Dodd

60-inch by 53-inch oil on panel

A Kingfisher, OK, native, Jeff Dodd now lives outside of Arnett, OK, and his paintings often echo the landscapes and big, beautiful blue skies that he sees in his home state.

“God’s handiwork can sometimes take your breath away,” he says.

Dodd has spent a lot of time photographing bucking broncos and bulls at the Frontier Rodeo Co. in Freedom, OK, and his work for NBC, “Frontier Rodeo Company Yearlings,” is one that sprung from his time with the animals and the ranch hands that work with them.

He earned his bachelor’s degree in fine arts from Oklahoma State University and attended The Art Students League of New York before returning to this part of the country. As a master’s degree student at Wichita State University in Wichita, KS, Dodd received a mural project commission and focused in that direction. He started his art career producing pencil drawings and watercolors and then taught himself his own style of oil painting. Two of his large murals, called “Oklahoma Black Gold” and “We Belong to the Land,” are permanently on display at the Oklahoma State Capitol above the Senate and House chambers. People can see his work also at the Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, OK, and at the Norman Regional Hospital Healthplex, Norman, OK.

2018

“Undivisive” by Poteet Victory

40-inch by 40-inch oil on linen

Native American artist Poteet Victory showcases his passion for contrast and color with the work for NBC he calls “Undivisive”; it is part of his series The Abbreviated Portrait. The entire work is painted with his skilled use of a palette knife and reflects his love of color.

Victory was born and reared in Idabel, OK, and grew up in the rodeo circuit riding bulls and wild horses. He is Choctaw and Cherokee, from his paternal grandmother. His mentor, well known artist and fellow Idabel native Harold Stephenson, encouraged Victory to pursue art, and he spent two years in New York attending The Art Students League of New York before branching out to refine his own style of painting.

His work as a contemporary Native American artist is in demand worldwide. He is the first abstract artist to be invited to exhibit at the prestigious Prix de West, hosted by the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum. His current work is exhibited in his gallery, Victory Contemporary, in Santa Fe, NM, and at the Howell Gallery of Fine Art in Oklahoma City. It has also been exhibited internationally in London at the Halcyon Gallery at Harrods.

2017

“Prairie Oasis” by Sonya Terpening

30-inch by 36-inch oil on linen

Artist Sonya Terpening is drawn to the American West and its history.

“There is something about the past that we all share that makes us better for remembering it,” she says. “I think art touches the soul and teaches in the ways that words cannot.”

Terpening has been painting professionally for more than 30 years in both oil and watercolor mediums. She grew up in Texas but graduated from Sequoyah High School outside of Claremore, OK. She studied at Oklahoma State University and currently lives in Grapevine, TX.

Her work has been part of the prestigious Prix de West International show, hosted by the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, for 23 years and to the Masters of the American West at the Autry Museum in Los Angeles for 12 years. In 2008, Terpening received a gold medal in watercolor at the Masters of the American West show. She was a featured artist at the 2006 Rendezvous at the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, OK, and the 2014 recipient of the National Daughters of the American Revolution’s Women in the Arts recognition award. She also was the inaugural recipient of OSU’s Smelser-Vallion Visiting Artist for the Doel Reed Center for the Arts in Taos, NM.

2015

“Medicine Bird” by Bert D. Seabourn

40-inch by 40-inch arcylic on canvas

Bert D. Seabourn views his art like the Oklahoma wind — constantly changing, growing and finding new directions, he says. He also strives to convey deep feelings about beauty, grace and the world around him as he uses his ancestry as subjects in a majority of the paintings. His painting for NBC shows the face of an Indian medicine man with a Kingfisher medicine bird.

Seabourn was born in Red Barn, TX, and went to high school in Purcell, OK. He studied art at Oklahoma City University, the University of Oklahoma and the Famous Artists School in Wilton, CT. His work is part of art collections and exhibitions throughout the United States, Europe, Asia and South Africa, including China’s National Palace Museum, the Vatican, the American Embassy in London; and the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. His honors include the 1982 Governor’s Art Award; the 1976 Master Artist award by the Five Civilized Tribes Museum in Muskogee, OK; the 2004 Oklahoma’s Living Treasure Award; and a Lifetime Achievement Award and 2009 Artist of the Year Award from the Paseo Art Association in Oklahoma City. One of his notable works, “Wind Walker,” is a 23-foot tall bronze sculpture of a red-tailed hawk and a medicine man that stands outside the Oklahoma attorney general’s office.

Seabourn is a painter, printmaker, sculptor, author and teacher. He lives in Oklahoma City.

2014

“The Bluff, Johnson Ranch Near Guymon, OK” by Carol Beesley

36-inch by 48-inch oil on canvas

Norman, OK, artist Carol Beesley grew up reading vivid descriptions of the American West, and these stories by novelist Zane Grey heightened her own interest of adventure in the rough terrain, mountains and canyons described in these books. Today, she paints the places of her own adventures after first visiting them to take photographs.

“In what many viewers see as desolate and dry, I see the history of our world,” she says.

Beesley has a master’s degree in English and taught for a short time before returning to the classroom to study art mediums ranging from ceramics to painting to photography. She has master’s degrees in ceramics and American literature from the University of Dallas and the University of Kentucky, respectively, as well as a master’s degree in fine arts from the University of California, Los Angeles. She also was a recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship to study art history at Columbia University in New York.

Soon after graduating from UCLA, Beesley went to work for the University of Oklahoma to teach history of photography, drawing and painting. In her 26 years as an art professor, she developed her own unique style of landscape painting featuring rich, dense colors. She also is a collector of photography and the Carol Beesley Hennagin Collection features more than 100 images at OU’s Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art in Norman.

2012

“Oklahoma Spirit” by Tom Palmore

40-inch by 30-inch acrylic and oil on canvas

Tom Palmore loves his state, its history, its heritage and its flag, and that love is reflected in his interpretation of Oklahoma’s state flag in this painting for NBC. He sees peace and harmony through the pipe and olive branch while the Osage shield represents Oklahoma’s unique heritage. The hummingbirds in this work represent the free and colorful spirit of Oklahomans. Infusing his paintings with wit and whimsy, Palmore also strives to reflect his respect and love for animals in much of his work.

He attended the University of Nevada at Reno; North Texas State University and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Honors include the Toppan Award from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art and the Chelterham Art Center, both in Philadelphia; purchase awards from the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and the Artist of the Year Award from Santa Fe (NM) Magazine.

His work appears in numerous collections across the United States, including the Smithsonian Institution; the Whitney Museum; the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Denver Museum of Art; the New Orleans Museum of Art; the National Museum of Wildlife Art, Jackson, WY; the St. Louis Museum of Art; and the Indianapolis Museum of Art.

2011

“The Gathering at Medicine Creek Lodge” by Brent Learned

40-inch by 60-inch acrylic on canvas

Brent Learned is an award-winning Native American artist who draws, paints and sculpts the American Indian in a rustic , impressionistic style. He is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne-Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma and signs his work with his Indian name “Haa Naa Jaa Ne-doa,” which means Buffalo Bull Howling. Underneath his name he signs “Arapaho” in honor of his mother.

The painting Learned created for NBC depicts the 1867 Medicine Lodge peace treaty negotiations between the U.S. military and Plains Indian tribes of the Great Plains. In the painting, the Cheyenne Dog Soldiers enter the Medicine Creek Lodge grounds in their full military regalia; more than 500 of these soldiers showed up to take part in the treaty signing.

“Once the Cheyenne Dog Soldiers neared the site of the campgrounds on horses decorated with war paint, they let out chilling war cries and fired rifles into the air,” Learned writes. “Their horses whipped through tall grass as the Dog Soldiers brandished their feathered lances and rode with rifles high over their heads.”

Born and reared in Oklahoma City, Learned has a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from the University of Kansas. His work can be found in private collections that include the Oklahoma Governor’s Mansion, the Kerr Foundation, Oklahoma City; and the Haskell Indian University, Lawrence, Kan.; and at the Smithsonian Institute’s National Museum of the American Indian and the Democratic National Headquarters, Washington; the Cheyenne-Arapaho Museum, Clinton, OK; the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, Oklahoma City; University of Kansas Art Museum, Lawrence, KS, among others. Commission work includes the Native American Heritage Celebration poster art in 2005; the Association of American Indian Physicians in 2004; Red Earth, Oklahoma City; and Oklahoma City Public Schools.

2010

“Winter’s Solstice” by Mikel Donahue

22-inch by 33-inch colored pencil and watercolor

Inspired by both the work and love of the horse and cowboy, Oklahoma artist Mikel Donahue is living his dream of drawing, painting and raising horses. His great-grandfather was a cowboy pioneer, and his grandfather painted Western art, and the Tulsa native learned to love and appreciate both worlds. He expresses this love using colored pencil, watercolor, acrylic and oils on paper and canvas.

He is involved with working ranches and in the quarter horse industry and understands the bond between animals and humans and how to recognize their unique personalities as they work together.

The Cowboy Artists of America named Donahue to its elite artists’ organization in 2012. Other honors include winning the Premier Platinum Award from the Buffalo Bill Art Show and Sale in 2010 in Cody, WY, for his colored pencil and watercolor work “Long Days,” being selected for the Prix de West Invitational Show and Sale at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City and being the featured artist in 2009 at the American Horse in Art Show and Sale at the American Quarter Horse Museum in Amarillo, TX. He also won Best of Show two out of three years at the Working Ranch Cowboy Association Show and Sale and the Will Rogers Award for artist of the year from the Academy of Western Artists. His work hangs in museums, galleries and private collections, and it has been featured on the covers and stories of a wide range of magazines. He and his wife breed running quarter horses outside Broken Arrow, OK.

2009

“Land of Dreams” by Benjamin Harjo Jr.

28-inch by 36-inch acrylic on paper

Coming from a heritage of Seminole and Absentee Shawnee Native Americans, Benjamin Harjo Jr. sees the world and its creators in vibrant colors and geometric patterns. He sees Oklahoma as a colorful melting pot of the West and says it is “a land of dreams and promise, a land of color and change, a land of blocks with cities and towns and a melding of traditions.”

Harjo had no formal training in high school and was self-taught before attending the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, NM, where he worked elements of woodblock printmaking, color and design into his style. He eventually transferred to Oklahoma State University and earned his bachelor’s degree in fine arts from there.

His extensive awards include being named a 2009 Oklahoma Living Treasure and Honored One at the 17th annual Red Earth Festival and honored with the Woody Crumbo Memorial Award at the Santa Fe Indian Market, Distinguished Alumnus of OSU and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Paseo Arts Association, Oklahoma City. He also represented Oklahoma in an Absolut Vodka Campaign and was the official poster artist of the Southwestern Association for Indian Arts’ Santa Fe Indian Market. The Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian has twice made him the featured artist for its annual Aspen Benefit.

His work hangs in private collections and in the Oklahoma Museum of Natural History as part of the Fred E. Brown Collection, Norman, OK; the Red Earth Arts Center, Oklahoma City; Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa; the Wheelright Museum, Santa Fe; and the National Museum of the American Indian, Washington.

2008

“Beauty and Strength” by Mitsuno Ishii Reedy

30-inch by 40-inch oil on canvas

Mitsuno Ishii Reedy of Norman is a well-known portrait artist whose work hangs in the Oklahoma State Capitol and in corporate offices and private offices around the world. She is a native of Osaka, Japan, who came to the United States at age 20; her career as an artist began in the 1970s, and she has studied with notable pastel artists and oil painters.

Even though she is known for her portrait work, she also is inspired by landscapes, still lifes, flowers and different cultures and enjoys plein-air paintings completed on site outdoors.

She has painted commissioned portraits of Oklahoma Gov. Brad Henry; Herrera de la Fuente, maestro of the Oklahoma City Philharmonic; U.S. District Judge Wayne Alley of Oklahoma City and the late Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti. The Portrait Society of American recognized her portrait of Alley in its 2001 international competition.

Reedy’s honors include election to the Pastel Society of America in 1978 as a full member; to the Pastel Society of Japan in 2001 as an associate member; The Portrait Institute; the Marquis Who’s Who as an artist; Who’s Who in the South and Southwest and in American Art, and others. Her work has appeared in various publications and can be found in public places that include the Oklahoma State Capitol and the U.S. District Bankruptcy Court, both in Oklahoma City; the Greenwood Cultural Center, Tulsa, OK; the University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK; and the Purdue University’s business school, West Lafayette, IN. She attended and graduated from Studio Incamminati’s School for Contemporary Realist Art, Philadelphia, in 2015.

2007

“Lone Chief Cheyenne” by Otto Duecker III

23-inch by 19-inch oil on board

A master artist of precise detail, Duecker has used a photographic portrait taken by Edward Curtis, a North American Indian photographer, to paint in detail what the camera captured. He then painted the “snapshot” taped to a rough and cracked background for his NBC painting “Lone Chief Cheyenne.” The painting is an example of his variation of the New Realism art movement. With his extreme attention to detail, he is considered an American Hyperrealist painter and is also a draughtsman.

Duecker was born in Milwaukee and raised in the Netherlands, Turkey and Germany before his family settled in Oklahoma. He earned a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from Oklahoma State University and taught for more than a decade before gaining attention for the human figures he was painting in precise detail.

His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and can be found in major private collections, including that of Walter Forbes, Ralph Lauren and Danielle Steele. He has had solo exhibitions in New York, Arizona, Florida, New Mexico and Oklahoma. The galleries and museums that have his work include the Oklahoma City Museum of Art; the Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, OK; the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art at the University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK; the Hummer Galleries, New York; Plus One Gallery, London; LewAllan Gallery, Santa Fe., NM; Robert Kidd Gallery, Birmingham, MI; and M.A. Doran Gallery, Tulsa.

2006

“Prairie Sentinel” by Kenny McKenna

40-inch by 32-inch oil on linen

Once a full-time musician, Kenny McKenna now finds music in the images he paints of the mountains, the plains, wildlife and other landscapes.

The Kansas Music Hall of Fame and South Dakota Rock and Roll Music Hall of Fame member spent years traveling the country for his music and on family road trips, and he eventually started painting the landscapes he saw on his travels. McKenna honed his visual art skills under the direction of Texas artist Dalhart Windberg. In 1995 came his first major commission: The Grand Canyon Railway in Williams, Ariz., commissioned him for several paintings in a permanent display. That same year, the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa accepted one of his paintings for its American Art in Miniature exhibit, and he continued participating in that for years. Working in oils, his impressionistic painting style brings in sunlight, is filled with color harmonies and exude calmness.

The Oklahoma Arts Council, Oklahoma governor’s office and Friends of the Capitol commissioned his work for an art installation in 2018 honoring the Oklahoma State Capitol Building’s Centennial, and his work has been part of exhibits throughout the region and beyond, including at Masters of the American West, Autry National Center, Los Angeles; Small Works Great Wonders, National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, Oklahoma City; Collectors’ Reserve, Gilcrease Museum; Night of Artists Exhibition and Sale, Briscoe Western Art Museum, San Antonio, TX; and Nature Works Wildlife Show and Sale, Tulsa.  McKenna’s art has been featured in magazines such as Art of the West, Southwest Art and Western Art Collector. He lives in Oklahoma City.

2005

“Prairie Rainbow” by Jean Richardson

45-inch by 65-inch acrylic on canvas

A native of Oklahoma, Jean Richardson comes from a long line of relatives who made their home in the West: Her grandparents were ranchers, and her heritage includes old family stories of pioneering on the Great Plains. In this painting for NBC, Richardson depicts the dreamlike movement of horses across a plain, an image that shows off her fascination with form, Western myth and family history. She views horses as a symbol of the human spirit. Her interests are in color, form, movement and energy rather than literal renderings; they showcase a fascination with the timelessness of myth.

Western photographer Edward Curtis and the American Luminists, whose works played with the effects of light in landscape, influenced Richardson’s work. She reinterprets vast skies and limitless prairies in her abstract expressionism and is known for using jewel tones and earthen hues for her colors.

Richardson has been painting since she was 7 years old. She has a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from Wesleyan College in Macon, GA, and studied at The Art Students League of New York. Her work is part of collections at the Gilcrease Museum and Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, OK; the National Academy of Design, New York; and the Minnesota Museum of Art, St. Paul, MN.; and the State of Oklahoma. She has also been featured in exhibitions nationwide and is a member of Who’s Who in American Art and Who’s Who in the South and Southwest.

2004

“Mornin’ Mounts” by Harold “H” Holden

30-inch by 40-inch oil

Harold “H” Holden’s vast experience with horses is the driving force behind his art — sculpture and painting — and the view from his art studio in Kremlin, OK, could practically populate the scene he depicted here. The artist’s achievements in Western art can be found in the Oklahoma State Capitol, on the 1993 U.S. Postal Service’s Cherokee Strip Commemorative Stamp, in books and on magazine covers. See his sculptures in public art installations statewide, including in Altus, OK, where NBC Oklahoma commissioned him for the “Crossing the Red” and “Vision Seeker” monuments. His public sculpture work includes “We Will Remember,” the kneeling cowboy he created for the Oklahoma State University’s basketball team’s plane crash memorial in the Gallagher-Iba Arena in Stillwater; the “Will Rogers on Horseback” at the Will Rogers World Airport in Oklahoma City; “Boomer” in Enid, OK; and “Headin’ to Market” at the Oklahoma City Stockyards. He also sculpted a series of commemorative bronzes to depict the 165-year history of the Cherokee Strip in Oklahoma and Kansas.

Holden attended Oklahoma State University and after graduating from the Texas Academy of Art in Houston, he started working in the commercial art field, eventually becoming art director at Western Horseman Magazine. At night, he began his fine art career. After a tour of duty with the U.S. Navy in Vietnam, Holden returned to art full-time. He received several commissions from the National Cattlemen’s Association between 1982 and 1986, and collectors took notice. Along the way, he spent leisure time roping and being part of the cowboy way of life, which helped inform his art.

Holden received the Oklahoma Governor’s Arts Award in 2001, was inducted into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame in 2014; and was inducted into the exclusive Cowboy Artists of America in 2012. He also has received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Oklahoma Sculpture Society, among other awards. His work is in the museum collections of the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, the Oklahoma State Capitol and the Oklahoma History Center, all in Oklahoma City; the Ranching Heritage Museum in Lubbock, TX; the Whitney Gallery at the Buffalo Bill Museum in Cody, WY; the Elizabeth Dunnegan Gallery of Fine Art in Bolivar, MO; and the Museum of the Cherokee Strip in Enid. He and Mike Larsen, another NBC Oklahoma Artist Series Artist, had a two-man show called “Cowboys and Indians” at the Oklahoma Hall of Fame in 2017.

2003

“Legend Keeper” by Mike Larsen

30-inch by 40-inch acrylic

Depicting his own Native American ancestors, Oklahoma painter and sculptor Mike Larsen gives visual tribute to a unique component of American history. Significant American Indian events and ideas shown in his creations are indigenous to Oklahoma. The Perkins, OK, native and member of the Chickasaw Nation has received numerous awards for his work. The Five Civilized Tribes Museum named Larsen a Master Artist in 1996 when his 26-foot-long mural “Flight of the Spirit” honoring five Native American ballet dancers was installed in the Oklahoma State Capitol.

Larsen considers himself a historian with a purpose of providing a living visual history of a vibrant people. His oils, watercolors, pastels and sculptures can be seen in museums and private collections throughout the United States.

Larsen studied traditional art disciplines at Amarillo Junior College, Amarillo, TX;; the University of Houston; and at The Arts Student League of New York.

His series of eight murals depicting the heritage of southwest Oklahoma, called “Quartz Mountain Sacred Ground,” graces the lobby of the Quartz Mountain Arts and Conference Center in Lone Wolf, OK, north of Altus, OK. In the 1990s he painted 36 of the 39 federally recognized tribes in Oklahoma in a series called “Shamans of the Nations.”

Larsen was inducted into the Chickasaw Hall of Fame in 2000 and the Oklahoma Hall of Fame in 2015 and was named Oklahoma Today’s Oklahoman of the Year in 2006. In 2004, his tribe commissioned him to paint portraits of its living elders, a project that turned into the book “They Know Who They Are.” A second book — “I am Proud to Be Chickasaw” followed, and a third set of 24 living elder paintings was in the works as of 2018. Other prominent commissions include painting six murals for the Reynolds Performing Arts Center and the School of Dance at the University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK; a nine-foot sculpture in front of the Civic Center Music Hall, Oklahoma City; eight, 8-by-20-foot murals for the Pokagon band of the Potawatomi Tribe, New Buffalo, MI; and a 12-foot sculpture at the St. Joseph Regional Healthcare System, Patterson, NJ. His autobiography “Don’t Never Be Afraid of Your Horses” was published in 2017. He and Harold Holden, another NBC Oklahoma Artist Series Artist, had a two-man show called “Cowboys and Indians” at the Oklahoma Hall of Fame in 2017.