Olin Herman Travis was an American painter and arts educator active for much of the 20th-century. He spent most of his life working in Texas, though he and his first wife Kathryne Hail Travis routinely traveled to Arkansas. In addition to his paintings, Travis is largely known for several public murals in Dallas and for working with Kathryne to co-found the Dallas Art Institute (DAI) – the first major art institution in the south to offer artistic instruction in a variety of fields.

Olin H. Travis was born on November 15, 1888, in Dallas, Texas, the second of six children born to Olin Few Travis and Eulalia Moncrief Travis. He grew up with some familiarity with the arts as his father worked as a printer, and his next-door neighbor was noted sculptor Clyde Giltner Chandler. She introduced him to painter Stephen Seymour Thomas and he began taking art classes soon after.

In 1916, Olin married fellow artist and one of his former students, Kathryne Hail, in Ozark, Arkansas. After their wedding, the pair spent several years traveling and sketching in different parts of the country, notably around Colorado, Florida, Missouri, Mexico, the Ozark Mountains, and the area surrounding the Great Lakes. Olin and Kathryne had one son and one daughter together before getting a divorce in 1934, an event highly publicized in local newspapers.

In 1935, Travis married his second wife Josephine Oliver, an accomplished painter and apprentice to Frank Reaugh. The pair had met two years prior, on her eighth trip to the area with Reaugh to sketch landmarks like Big Bend, Double Mountains, and Blanco Canyon. After their wedding, Josephine turned her attention to the violin – playing with both the San Antonio Symphony Orchestra and the Dallas Symphony Orchestra until her retirement in the 1970s following Olin's death.

Olin H. Travis continued making and exhibiting art until his death on December 4, 1975, and his work has been included in numerous exhibitions in the decades since. His wife, Josephine Oliver Travis, died in 1991 at age 83.