Kermit Oliver is an American painter who studied and worked in Houston before moving to Waco, Texas. His work reflects his Texas heritage and his interests in mythology, religion, and history. Oliver combines “contemporary and classical elements, resulting in a style he calls symbolic realism.” His paintings create “strange, lushly illustrated worlds populated by people and animals realistically drawn but placed in surreal juxtaposition.”
Oliver was named the 2017 Texas State Two-Dimensional Artist by the Texas Commission on the Arts. His painting, “Tobias, ” was included in the 2016 inaugural exhibition at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. In 2013, Oliver was honored with the first Lifetime Achievement Award from the Art League Houston.