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oil on linen
A gift of Sen. and Mrs. James Halligan and the Oklahoma State University Family. A project of the Oklahoma State Senate Historical Preservation Fund, Inc.
Dimensions: 40 x 30
February 14, 2013

The Artwork

Born in 1928 in Holdenville, Oklahoma, Thomas Boone Pickens, better known as T. Boone Pickens, became one of the nation’s most successful businessmen. First building one of the nation’s largest independent oil companies, Mesa Petroleum, Pickens later reinvented himself in the 1970s as one of most successful investment fund operators with BP Capitol. By 2008, he had helped bring eight business entities public. The same year, Pickens's book The First Billion is the Hardest was published, and he launched the Pickens Plan, a grassroots campaign to reduce America’s dependency on foreign oil.

In addition to his success as a businessman, Pickens is a well-known philanthropist. During the breadth of his career, he has contributed more than $1 billion dollars to philanthropic causes with $500 million designated to his alma mater, Oklahoma State University. In 2003, T. Boone Pickens was inducted into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame.

The Artist

Born and raised in Muskogee, Oklahoma, Mike Wimmer began his career as an artist during the seventh grade. He earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Oklahoma, where he met Don Ivan Punchatz. Wimmer later moved to Arlington, Texas, to be Punchatz's apprentice at the famous Sketch Pad Studio. Wimmer learned valuable knowledge regarding the business aspect of illustrating as well as various painting techniques and the working methods of the local Dallas illustrators. After his two and a half year apprenticeship, he moved back to Norman, Oklahoma, and set up his own studio using all that he had learned in Texas.

Since then, Wimmer has become very successful illustrating children’s books such as Flight: The Journey of Charles Lindbergh by Robert Burliegh which was the winner of the Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children in 1990. He also illustrated All the Places to Love by Patricia MacLachlan which was published in 1994 and won the Oklahoma Book Award for Best Illustrated Children’s Book 1995. Wimmer’s book, Will Rogers by Former Governor Frank Keating, was published in 2002 and won the 2003 Spur Award from the Western Writers Association of America. Even though Wimmer has worked for some of the largest corporations in the world including Disney and Procter and Gamble, Wimmer finds the greatest artistic pleasure within his creation of fine art.