Commissioning a Portrait in Iowa
Hazel Morgan provides a bespoke portrait painting service to clients throughout Iowa. 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 Iowa. Each commission begins with a personal consultation and results in a work of enduring artistic merit.
Portrait Artist Iowa Area
As your trusted Portrait Artist Iowa, Hazel Morgan serves portrait clients in Iowa and the surrounding communities. Portraits are shipped directly to your door with professional packaging and full insurance coverage.
How to Commission a Portrait from Iowa
Commissioning a portrait from Hazel Morgan is a collaborative and enjoyable experience, regardless of where you are located in Iowa. 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 Iowa, 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 Iowa typically receive their portrait within one to two weeks of completion.
Why Clients in Iowa 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 Iowa
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 Iowa 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 Iowa. 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 Iowa
Hazel admires Iowa for the quiet, grounded honesty she finds woven into the fabric of everyday life there. There's something about the wide-open skies rolling over the countryside and the unhurried pace of small-town streets that strips away pretension and leaves only genuine, human character - exactly the quality she spends her life chasing in her portrait work. The people she has met across the state carry their stories openly, in the lines of their faces and the steadiness of their gaze, and for a portrait painter, that kind of authentic presence is an extraordinary gift. Iowa doesn't feel like a place trying to be anything other than itself, and Hazel finds that deeply refreshing.
Hazel loves the sense of community and cultural pride she discovers every time she visits. She has spent warm afternoons wandering through the Des Moines Art Center, admiring how a state so often associated with open farmland has cultivated such a sincere and sophisticated relationship with the visual arts. Conversations there have a wonderful depth to them - locals talk about paintings the way they talk about neighbors, with familiarity and genuine feeling. That warmth spills naturally into her portrait sessions, where clients arrive relaxed, open, and ready to be seen rather than simply photographed in paint. It makes her work feel less like a commission and more like a collaboration between old friends.
Hazel also admires the literary spirit that runs through Iowa, particularly the legacy connected to the Iowa Writers' Workshop in Iowa City. The idea that a place so rooted in the land has also become a sanctuary for storytelling resonates with her deeply, because portraiture is itself a form of storytelling - a single, careful image that holds an entire life. Walking through Iowa City's Northside neighborhood, with its independent bookshops and unhurried coffee conversations, she feels that same narrative instinct alive in the people around her, and it quietly informs how she approaches every canvas.
Hazel also loves the loyalty her Iowa clients bring to the relationship. They invest emotionally in the portrait process, sharing memories and meaning behind the faces they want preserved, and they treat the finished work as a true heirloom rather than a decoration. That level of trust and sincerity is something she genuinely treasures, and it keeps drawing her back to Iowa with her brushes and her whole heart.
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 Iowa.
Request a Free ConsultationIowa Counties Hazel Paints Portraits In
Adair, Adams, Allamakee, Appanoose, Audubon, Benton, Black Hawk, Boone, Bremer, Buchanan, Buena Vista, Butler, Calhoun, Carroll, Cass, Cedar, Cerro Gordo, Cherokee, Chickasaw, Clarke, Clay, Clayton, Clinton, Crawford, Dallas, Davis, Decatur, Delaware, Des Moines, Dickinson, Dubuque, Emmet, Fayette, Floyd, Franklin, Fremont, Greene, Grundy, Guthrie, Hamilton, Hancock, Hardin, Harrison, Henry, Howard, Humboldt, Ida, Iowa, Jackson, Jasper, Jefferson, Johnson, Jones, Keokuk, Kossuth, Lee, Linn, Louisa, Lucas, Lyon, Madison, Mahaska, Marion, Marshall, Mills, Mitchell, Monona, Monroe, Montgomery, Muscatine, O’Brien, Osceola, Page, Palo Alto, Plymouth, Pocahontas, Polk, Pottawattamie, Poweshiek, Ringgold, Sac, Scott, Shelby, Sioux, Story, Tama, Taylor, Union, Van Buren, Wapello, Warren, Washington, Wayne, Webster, Winnebago, Winneshiek, Woodbury, Worth and Wright.
Towns in Iowa Where Hazel’s Portrait Clients Live
Des Moines, Beaverdale, South of Grand, Sherman Hill, West Des Moines, Clive, Urbandale, Waukee, Johnston, Ankeny, Grimes, Pleasant Hill, Indianola, Winterset, Adel, Ames, Nevada, Story City, Cedar Rapids, Marion, Hiawatha, Iowa City, Coralville, North Liberty, Solon, Amana, Cedar Falls, Waterloo, Dubuque, Davenport, Bettendorf, Le Claire, Muscatine, Clinton, Burlington, Fort Madison, Keokuk, Ottumwa, Fairfield, Pella, Oskaloosa, Newton, Marshalltown, Mason City, Charles City, Decorah, Spirit Lake, Okoboji, Arnolds Park, Storm Lake, Sioux City and Council Bluffs.
Grant Wood, Regionalism and the Iowa Face
One painting made in Iowa is probably the most recognised American picture ever produced, and it is a double portrait. Grant Wood painted American Gothic in 1930 using his dentist and his sister as models, and nearly a century later people are still arguing about what he meant by it.
The land was Ioway, Meskwaki and Sauk homeland, and the Meskwaki Settlement in Tama County is unusual in America: the tribe bought its own land back in 1857 and holds it outright rather than in federal trust. Settlement came fast after 1833 and Iowa entered the Union in 1846, on soil that turned out to be among the most fertile in the world.
That soil shaped everything, including how people here look at pictures. Iowa was settled by farmers who owned their own land, educated their children, and built opera houses in towns of two thousand people. The state had one of the highest literacy rates in the country by 1900. It is a place with a long-standing, entirely unpretentious interest in art.
Grant Wood was born near Anamosa in 1891 and spent most of his life in Cedar Rapids. He went to Munich in 1928 to oversee a stained-glass commission, saw the fifteenth-century Flemish and German painters in the Alte Pinakothek, and came home with a way of drawing a face - hard-edged, clear, slightly enamelled - that he applied to Iowans. The results are portraits of extraordinary specificity.
He was not alone. With John Steuart Curry of Kansas and Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri he made up the three Regionalists, who argued in the 1930s that American painting should be about American places and American faces. Wood ran a summer art colony at Stone City in 1932 and 1933 and then taught at the University of Iowa. Whatever one thinks of Regionalism as a programme, it produced some of the best portrait heads painted in America between the wars.
The state built good places to see pictures. The Des Moines Art Center is an architectural event in itself - an Eliel Saarinen building of 1948, a I. M. Pei addition of 1968 and a Richard Meier wing of 1985, three of the twentieth century’s major architects on one lawn. The Cedar Rapids Museum of Art holds the largest collection of Grant Wood anywhere. The Figge in Davenport keeps his archive.
There is also the Amana Colonies in Iowa County - seven villages founded by German Pietists in 1855 who lived communally until 1932, and whose furniture-making and weaving traditions continue. And the Iowa State Fair, running since 1854, which has a fine art exhibition that ordinary farming families enter and win, year after year.
Iowa made things as well as growing them: Maytag at Newton, Quaker Oats at Cedar Rapids, Amana appliances, Pella windows, Vermeer at Pella, Winnebago at Forest City, and the seed and insurance businesses of Des Moines. Many of these are still family concerns in their third and fourth generation.
That is where a good many commissions come from. Des Moines and its western suburbs - West Des Moines, Clive, Urbandale, Waukee. Cedar Rapids and Marion. Iowa City and Coralville. Ames. The Quad Cities at Davenport and Bettendorf. Dubuque and Decorah in the driftless country, where the hills were never flattened by glaciers and the towns look nothing like the rest of the state. And the Iowa Great Lakes at Okoboji and Spirit Lake, where families have had summer houses for a hundred years.
Institutional portraiture is well established. The University of Iowa, Iowa State, the University of Northern Iowa, Grinnell, Drake, Luther, Coe, Cornell College, the medical centre at Iowa City, the state capitol at Des Moines and the older Des Moines firms all keep collections and continue to commission.
The commonest Iowa commission is a farm succession - a portrait made when a century farm passes to the next generation, sometimes with the land in the background. The Iowa Department of Agriculture has recognised farms held by one family for a hundred years since 1976, and there are now thousands of them. That continuity is the real subject.
Wood understood it exactly. Whatever else American Gothic is doing, it is a picture about a house, a family and a piece of ground, and about people who intend to stay. That has not changed.