By Susan Duke Waters
The work of Kathy Morris, a fellow Portrait Society of Atlanta member is distinctive and has been recognized internationally. She is best known for her luminous egg tempera skill, for awards with the Portrait Society of America and the international Almenara Prize. Her artistic route from childhood-delight to renowned-artist will resonate with many, as real-life influences and experiences shaped the trajectory.
Kathy Morris’ path as an artist began early. Her parents were creative and provided their children with art supplies, emphasizing skill and originality. Kathy remembers her father tearing out the tracing paper from “How to Draw” books, encouraging drawing the pictures unaided, sometimes confiscating erasers! Likely, he needn’t have worried, for Kathy has always considered herself an artist. As a young child Kathy lost some of her hearing, causing her to analyze lip-reading and facial inflections. Flipping this misfortune, she feels it is this scrutiny that gave her a love and understanding of the human face, birthing her fascination and excitement of portraiture above all other subjects.
In youth, she drew constantly, striving for realism and taking any art classes available. One class project she enjoyed was a sketchbook which she populated with portraits; however, this was a time when the modern art movement was supreme. In a high school class, Kathy recalls being told that any realistic classwork would produce an automatic “F”. This academic leaning deterred her from pursuing art in college, but thankfully did not stop her completely.
Raising a family soon became a focus, though Kathy found opportunities to paint, such as children’s murals. In her mid-thirties, she ordered some instructional artbooks such as “Painting Watercolor Portraits that Glow” by Jan Kunz, and began to recognize that one could build on an art ability through learning. Continuing to pursue realism, choosing watercolor as much for practicality around small children as for beauty, she began experimenting with portraits, joined a watercolor society, entered her first art show, and sold her work. Pleased, she continued to work and sell for 25 years, developing her technique and making her own graphite paper to transfer sketches. Despite this, she describes painting in watercolor as “nerve-wracking” and a medium with which she has a “love-hate relationship.”
Following a six-year withdrawal from watercolor and painting, Kathy decided to learn academically taking two or three workshops a year, from artists such as Connie Lynn Reilly, Sean Cheetham, Kerry Dunn and David Kassan, which amounted to her first real exposure to painting from life and oil paint. Meanwhile, realism was inching a comeback.
Finding oils more forgiving than watercolor, she explored its qualities. She found she preferred ACM aluminum panels as a substrate, cutting and priming them herself. Kathy’s oil palette includes: Burnt Sienna, Raw and Burnt Umber, Titanium White, Ultramarine Blue, Cobalt Blue, Olive Green, Yellow Ochre Pale, Scarlet Lake, Alizarin Crimson Lake Extra (New Holland) and Transparent Yellow Oxide (Rembrandt). She mixes and tubes her own chromatic blacks from Olive Green, Alizarin Crimson and Ultramarine Blue, varying the proportions to create warm (toward brown) and cool (toward blue) darks, and finds them helpful to tone her substrate.
Encouraged, she began to focusing on fine art to the exclusion of other artistic ventures such as woodworking, deciding she was a becoming a “jack-of-all-trades” to the detriment of mastery. She set goals, such as a given number paintings per year, entering competitions and to be in the studio by 8:00 a.m., a schedule she still employs with commissions.
Her decision proved wise. In 2018 (and again in 2025!) she received a Certificate of Excellence from the Portrait Society of America and attended the National Convention. There she met Carol Kirby, then President of the Portrait Society of Atlanta and joined the society, enjoying the camaraderie and information, while finding the shows and website good sources for commissions. Sometime after, the egg tempera works of Julio Reyes and Candice Bohannon caught her eye. She was unfamiliar with the medium, attributing its effects in paintings of artists she admired, such Andrew Wyeth, to dry-brush watercolor. Curious, she took a workshop from the husband/wife duo and loved the luminance!
This glow has made egg tempera her favored and most recognized medium – despite acknowledging that it is in many ways more frustrating than watercolor. Kathy explained that egg tempera artists make paint in small batches using dry pigment bound in egg yolk and water. Refrigerated, it can last 2-3 weeks. Her palette is essentially the same as in oil, plus Cadmium Orange. The paint must be applied in multiple, very thin layers to avoid cracking and flaking; each adds to the depth and dries almost immediately. Added difficulties are that light colors dry darker and dark shades lighter, and that they do not blend, so that form must be turned by cross-hatching using small soft-bristled brushes. Kathy acknowledges it is a painstaking process but that the final product possesses a luminosity unlike any other medium. “Its glow will draw a viewer across the room.” Kathy has become an ambassador for the medium, assuring that it is very archival, having been used in ancient Egyptian mummy portraits.
It was an egg tempera painting of a grandson, “Don’t Let Go” (pictured above), that garnered the 2025 Almenara Prize. Kathy saw a call-for-entry for the Spanish competition and checked its legitimacy by searching the jurors, past awardees and asking fellow artists. She entered and then forgot about it – until she received an email asking if the painting was available for shipment to Spain! Once there the luminosity that evades the camera was observed, and Kathy’s work was awarded the prize for “Best Figurative Painting”; an honor, but doubtless not the last.
Inspired by people, scenes might trigger her to stage a photo shoot to explore what she saw, yet she finds it important to paint what is true, to catch but not invent the story. Her painting of a shoeless boy holding a chicken, is of a grandchild that really plays barefoot with his pets. Beyond commissions, Kathy has thirteen grandchildren, so we can expect more delightful introductions!
Kathy’s advice is to start working with whatever supplies and facilities you have; not to postpone for the perfect set up or scenario. She used to lament the loss of not studying at an atelier, but now realizes the way her learning evolved was probably best path for her. She emphasized “not to compare oneself with others”, which led into how many times she’d been told, and tried, to “loosen up!”. Laughingly, she mentioned a quote attributed to Rembrandt van Rijn:
“I can’t paint the way they want me to paint. And they know that too. Of course, you will say that I ought to be practical and ought to try and paint the way they want me to paint. Well, I will tell you a secret. I have tried and I have tried very hard, but I can’t do it. I just can’t do it!”
Obviously Kathy, you don’t need to!