Bob Palmer

Few communities in Oklahoma have not benefitted from the paint brush and murals of Dr. Bob Palmer and Palmer Studios, and his students have become some of the best mural painters in the world. Bob continues to bring people and communities together and make Oklahoma a more beautiful state.

Bob grew up in a large family in southwest Oklahoma with few material things, but lots of love. Without the means to purchase paint-by-number books, he created small paintings on whatever canvas he could find using shoe polish and food coloring for paint. His aunt proudly displayed his childhood artwork in her home for years.

He attended school in Walters, Okla., which had no art classes. Moving on to college to study art without a formal background, he struggled to keep up his first two years at the University of Oklahoma. But "talent will out" as they say, and he was asked to return to Walters to establish an art program after completing his art degree in 1973.

After several years teaching, he and his wife, Carolyn, moved to Tennessee, where Bob completed a master's degree in photography and painting at East Tennessee State University in 1978. He taught several years at the high school and college level in Tennessee before returning to Oklahoma in the early 1980s.

In the mid-1980s he began a long career at the University of Central Oklahoma and in 2007 was named Oklahoma Art Educator of the year. His mural work across Oklahoma and outside the state, chronicled and illustrated in Painting Oklahoma and Beyond, was undertaken through his company Palmer Studios in Bethany, Oklahoma.

OTHER BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR: None at present (too busy painting murals across Oklahoma!)

CONTACT INFORMATION FOR AUTHOR: If you have comments for the author about this or other of the author’s writings, or if you would like to schedule the author for a book signing or related event, please email the author at: lfloyd10@cox.net, or you can write to the author at P.O. Box 721625, Oklahoma City, OK 73172.