Charles Banks Wilson (1918-2013) was a painter and a printmaker who was born in Springdale, Arkansas, and then was raised in Miami, Oklahoma. After expressing an interest in art, he attended the Art Institute of Chicago in 1936, then moved to New York City in 1941 shortly after marrying Edna McKibben of Miami. He would produce his first lithograph for Associated Artists of America and illustrate drawings for books over the next two decades. When he return to Oklahoma in 1943, Wilson started a permanent studio and in 1945, started teaching night classes at the Northeastern Oklahoma A&M College, where he eventually became head of the art department. He would continue to illustrate books and produce lithographs from his own press. He also received portrait commissions, from a Tulsa oilman in 1957 and collector Thomas Gilcrease. After his position ended 1960, Wilson would work for the state legislature from 1963 to 1968, producing life-size portraits of Cherokee linguist Sequoyah, humorist Will Rogers, athlete Jim Thorpe, and Sen. Robert S. Kerr for the Capitol Rotunda. In 1970, he received a commission for a series of murals for the Capitol depicting Oklahoma historical events, which was completed in 1976. He also received the Governor's Arts Award and a Distinguished Service Citation from the University of Oklahoma that year. In 1977, Wilson was inducted into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame. Then in 1979, Wilson traveled throughout Oklahoma to assemble a collection of life portraits representing every American native tribe in the state. It was mostly completed in 1982 and was exhibited nationally, and now are in the hands of the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, where most of Wilson's works are displayed. His other works can be found at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the Library of Congress and Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., the Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa and in many private collections.