Gwen Coleman Lester was born and raised in Claremore, Oklahoma, and earned a BA in commercial art at Southwestern Oklahoma State University. After college, she worked for Williams Companies and McDonnell Douglas, and in 1984, Lester started entering Native gallery and booth shows. Her subject matter was mostly Pan-Indian, but that changed when she visited the Choctaw Nation Labor Day Festival in Tuskahoma for the first time and began to focus on historical and contemporary images of Choctaws that often incorporate Choctaw words. She became a full-time artist in 2000, and her colored-pencil works, pastels, and acrylics have won multiple awards, including First Place and Best Of division in Drawing at Santa Fe Indian Market. She was designated a Master Artist of the Five Civilized Tribes in 2007, and she received a show from Southern Plains Indian Museum in 2012. She was interviewed as part of the Oklahoma Native Artists Oral History Project in 2012. For more information, visit www.library.okstate.edu/oralhistory/ona © 2012 Oklahoma State University

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