Commissioning a Portrait in Colorado
Hazel Morgan provides a bespoke portrait painting service to clients throughout Colorado. An award-winning artist with over four decades of professional experience, Hazel creates hand-painted oil portraits of exceptional quality for individuals, families, corporations, and institutions across the state.
From the boardroom to the family home, Hazel’s portraits have graced the walls of distinguished collectors, university halls, and corporate headquarters throughout Colorado. Each commission begins with a personal consultation and results in a work of enduring artistic merit.
Portrait Artist Colorado Area
As your trusted Portrait Artist Colorado, Hazel Morgan serves portrait clients in Colorado and the surrounding communities. Portraits are shipped directly to your door with professional packaging and full insurance coverage.
How to Commission a Portrait from Colorado
Commissioning a portrait from Hazel Morgan is a collaborative and enjoyable experience, regardless of where you are located in Colorado. The process has been refined over hundreds of commissions to ensure a seamless experience for every client.
Step 1: Initial Consultation
The process begins with a complimentary consultation - by telephone, video call, or email - during which Hazel discusses your vision for the portrait. This covers the subject, preferred composition, size, background, clothing, and any particular details you would like to include. There is no obligation at this stage.
Step 2: Photographs & References
For clients in Colorado, Hazel can work from professional photographs, high-quality personal photographs, or a combination of multiple reference images. She provides clear guidance on the types of photographs that produce the best results. Where feasible, live sittings can also be arranged.
Step 3: The Painting Process
Once the composition is agreed, Hazel begins painting. The process typically takes between six and twelve weeks depending on the complexity of the piece. Clients receive progress photographs at key stages so you can see the portrait taking shape and provide feedback before completion.
Step 4: Delivery & Framing
Completed portraits are professionally packaged for shipping. Shipping and framing costs are provided once the painting is complete. Hazel can also recommend master framers who specialise in fine art framing to complement your finished portrait. Clients in Colorado typically receive their portrait within one to two weeks of completion.
Why Clients in Colorado Choose Hazel Morgan
Hazel Morgan brings a rare combination of artistic excellence, professional reliability, and personal warmth to every commission. Here is what sets her apart:
Over 40 years of professional experience - Hazel has been painting portraits professionally since the early 1980s, amassing a body of work that spans hundreds of commissions for private, corporate, and institutional clients worldwide.
Award-winning recognition - Her work has been exhibited at the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, the Royal Institute of Oil Painters, and other prestigious venues. She is a member of several leading art societies.
A personal, one-to-one service - Unlike studio operations, every portrait is painted entirely by Hazel herself. You deal directly with the artist from first consultation through to delivery, ensuring your vision is faithfully realised.
International shipping expertise - Hazel regularly ships completed portraits to clients across the United States, United Kingdom, Europe, and beyond. Every painting is professionally packaged to arrive in perfect condition.
Complete satisfaction guaranteed - Hazel works closely with each client throughout the painting process. Progress images are shared at every stage, and adjustments are made until you are completely happy with the finished portrait.
Frequently Asked Questions - Portrait Commissions in Colorado
Hazel provides personalized quotations after an initial telephone consultation, during which she discusses your specific requirements. The consultation is complimentary and entirely without obligation. Please get in touch to arrange a convenient time to talk.
Not at all. The majority of Hazel’s commissions are painted from photographs, which makes the process convenient for clients in Colorado and beyond. Hazel provides guidance on the best types of photographs to supply. Live sittings can be arranged where practical.
Most portraits are completed within six to twelve weeks from the start of painting, depending on the complexity of the commission. Hazel provides a realistic timeline during the initial consultation. Rush commissions can sometimes be accommodated for special occasions.
Hazel has extensive experience working with a range of photographic references, including older or lower-resolution images. She can often combine multiple photographs to create a single cohesive portrait. During the consultation, she will advise on whether your available photographs are suitable.
Completed portraits are professionally packaged using custom-built crating and shipped via insured courier directly to your address in Colorado. Shipping and framing are quoted separately after the portrait is completed.
Client satisfaction is paramount. Hazel shares progress photographs at key stages throughout the painting process so you can provide feedback and request adjustments. This collaborative approach means that by the time the portrait is complete, it faithfully reflects your vision.
Why Hazel Loves Colorado
Hazel admires Colorado for the way it carries so much living history in its landscapes and its people. From the dramatic peaks of Rocky Mountain National Park to the vibrant arts scene thriving in Denver's Denver Art Museum, there is a richness here that feels genuinely layered and earned. The state holds a remarkable mix of rugged independence and quiet sophistication, and that combination gives Hazel a deep well of inspiration to draw from every time she picks up a brush.
Hazel loves the people of Colorado most of all, and she believes that affection comes through clearly in her portraits. There is something wonderfully grounded about the individuals she meets here - people who spend weekends hiking trails above Boulder, who raise families in warm neighborhoods like Wash Park in Denver, and who carry an easy confidence that makes them compelling portrait subjects. A face that has known mountain light and wide-open sky has a particular kind of character to it, and Hazel finds that translates beautifully onto canvas. Her Colorado clients tend to bring a sense of ease to their sittings, which allows her to capture something genuinely true rather than simply posed.
Hazel also admires the way Colorado communities actively invest in culture and creativity. The creative energy that pulses through cities like Colorado Springs - home to institutions like the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center - reflects a population that takes art seriously and personally. That respect for the craft is something Hazel feels keenly when she works with clients here. They understand that a portrait is not just a likeness but a conversation, a way of saying that a person's story matters enough to be preserved with care and intention.
Hazel also loves returning to Colorado because it consistently renews her appreciation for what portraiture is really about - connection. Whether she is working with a multigenerational family in the foothills or painting a solo portrait for someone marking a milestone birthday, there is a warmth and openness in her Colorado clients that reminds her why she became a painter in the first place. This place, and these people, bring out some of her most heartfelt and honest work.
Ready to Commission Your Portrait?
Begin with a complimentary, no-obligation consultation. Hazel would love to discuss your portrait ideas and provide a personalized quotation for clients in Colorado.
Request a Free ConsultationColorado Counties Hazel Paints Portraits In
Adams, Alamosa, Arapahoe, Archuleta, Baca, Bent, Boulder, Broomfield, Chaffee, Cheyenne, Clear Creek, Conejos, Costilla, Crowley, Custer, Delta, Denver, Dolores, Douglas, Eagle, El Paso, Elbert, Fremont, Garfield, Gilpin, Grand, Gunnison, Hinsdale, Huerfano, Jackson, Jefferson, Kiowa, Kit Carson, La Plata, Lake, Larimer, Las Animas, Lincoln, Logan, Mesa, Mineral, Moffat, Montezuma, Montrose, Morgan, Otero, Ouray, Park, Phillips, Pitkin, Prowers, Pueblo, Rio Blanco, Rio Grande, Routt, Saguache, San Juan, San Miguel, Sedgwick, Summit, Teller, Washington, Weld and Yuma.
Towns in Colorado Where Hazel’s Portrait Clients Live
Denver, Cherry Creek, Country Club, Hilltop, Bonnie Brae, Washington Park, Park Hill, Cherry Hills Village, Greenwood Village, Englewood, Littleton, Castle Pines, Castle Rock, Parker, Lone Tree, Golden, Evergreen, Genesee, Lakewood, Boulder, Niwot, Louisville, Superior, Longmont, Lyons, Estes Park, Fort Collins, Loveland, Greeley, Colorado Springs, Broadmoor, Old North End, Monument, Palmer Lake, Manitou Springs, Woodland Park, Aspen, Snowmass Village, Basalt, Carbondale, Vail, Beaver Creek, Edwards, Avon, Eagle, Steamboat Springs, Telluride, Mountain Village, Crested Butte, Durango, Grand Junction and Pagosa Springs.
Mining Fortunes, Aspen and Portraiture in Colorado
Colorado got rich twice on things dug out of the ground, and both times the money went, at least partly, into pictures. The results are two of the more unexpected art institutions in America, and a portrait market that spreads from the plains to nine thousand feet.
The land is Ute, Cheyenne, Arapaho and Pueblo homeland. At Mesa Verde the Ancestral Puebloans built cliff dwellings in the twelfth century and left them within a hundred years; the site was the first cultural park in the National Park system, in 1906. The San Luis Valley in the south holds the oldest continuous towns in the state, Spanish-speaking since the 1850s, and San Luis, founded in 1851, is the oldest town in Colorado.
Gold at Cherry Creek in 1858 and silver at Leadville after 1877 made and unmade fortunes at speed. Horace Tabor went from storekeeper to the richest man in Colorado and back to destitution within twenty years. Molly Brown’s house in Denver survives, saved from demolition in 1970 by the campaign that started Colorado’s preservation movement.
Spencer Penrose put gold and copper money into Colorado Springs. He opened the Broadmoor in 1918, and - this is the part that matters - the hotel came with an art academy attached. The Broadmoor Art Academy became the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center in 1936, in a superb Pueblo Deco building, and under Boardman Robinson it trained a generation of painters. Its collection of Southwestern and American art is very good, and it now belongs to Colorado College.
Denver’s museum has one of the great buildings. Gio Ponti designed the seven-storey castle of grey glass tiles that opened in 1971 - his only completed building in North America - and Daniel Libeskind added the titanium wedge in 2006. The Denver Art Museum holds one of the earliest and most important collections of Native American art assembled by any general museum.
Next door stands something no other city has. The Clyfford Still Museum, opened in 2011, holds ninety-five per cent of the artist’s entire lifetime output - some three thousand works - because Still willed the whole estate to any American city that would build a museum for it and show nothing else. Denver said yes.
Aspen is the other surprise. Walter and Elizabeth Paepcke arrived in 1945 to find a nearly abandoned silver town, and brought with them Herbert Bayer - a Bauhaus master, one of the last living ones - who stayed for over twenty years and designed the Aspen Institute campus, the Sundeck, the Aspen Meadows and the town’s graphic identity. Aspen is, improbably, one of the most complete Bauhaus environments in the United States.
The Anschutz Collection, shown at the American Museum of Western Art in Denver, is among the finest private holdings of Western American painting anywhere and hangs floor to ceiling in a nineteenth-century building on Tremont Place. Loveland, meanwhile, has become a centre of bronze casting, with foundries serving sculptors from all over the world.
Commissions come from three quite different worlds. Denver and its southern suburbs - the Country Club and Hilltop neighbourhoods, Cherry Hills Village, Greenwood Village, Castle Pines. Boulder and the Front Range up to Fort Collins. Colorado Springs, particularly the Broadmoor and the Old North End. And the mountain resort towns: Aspen and Snowmass, Vail and Beaver Creek, Telluride, Crested Butte and Steamboat.
Institutional work is steady: the University of Colorado, Colorado College, Colorado State, the School of Mines at Golden, the Air Force Academy at Colorado Springs, the Anschutz Medical Campus, the state capitol, the federal courts and the older Denver and Springs firms.
The mountain-town commission has a character of its own. Second homes at altitude are usually large, timbered and full of daylight, and a portrait made for one of them often needs to hold its own against a wall of glass and a mountain. It is a different problem from a panelled dining room in the East, and it wants a different picture.
Ranching also survives in a serious way on the western slope and out on the eastern plains, and the Colorado sporting commission - a horse, a dog, a rifle, a family on their own land - remains as common here as anywhere in the West.