Commissioning a Portrait in New Mexico
Hazel Morgan provides a bespoke portrait painting service to clients throughout New Mexico. 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 New Mexico. Each commission begins with a personal consultation and results in a work of enduring artistic merit.
Portrait Artist New Mexico Area
As your trusted Portrait Artist New Mexico, Hazel Morgan serves portrait clients in New Mexico and the surrounding communities. Portraits are shipped directly to your door with professional packaging and full insurance coverage.
How to Commission a Portrait from New Mexico
Commissioning a portrait from Hazel Morgan is a collaborative and enjoyable experience, regardless of where you are located in New Mexico. 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 New Mexico, 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 New Mexico typically receive their portrait within one to two weeks of completion.
Why Clients in New Mexico 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 New Mexico
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 New Mexico 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 New Mexico. 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 New Mexico
Hazel admires New Mexico with a warmth that goes far deeper than admiration for a pretty landscape. There is something genuinely alive in this state - a layered, unhurried quality that she finds almost nowhere else. The ancient adobe architecture of Santa Fe's Pecos National Historical Park reminds her that human stories accumulate over centuries, pressing themselves into walls and faces alike. That sense of accumulated history is exactly what she tries to find in the people she paints - the quiet evidence of a life fully lived, etched into expression and posture and light. New Mexico hands her that perspective every time she visits.
Hazel loves the people of New Mexico most of all, and she says this without a moment's hesitation. Her clients here carry an ease and an authenticity that she finds deeply moving to work with. They tend to arrive for their portrait sittings without pretension, comfortable in their own skin in a way that makes her job a genuine joy rather than a performance. She has worked with families connected to the remarkable arts community around the Taos Art Museum at Fechin House, and she is always struck by how naturally creative the conversations become - how quickly a sitting turns into a real exchange about memory, identity, and what it means to be seen honestly.
Hazel also admires the extraordinary light that moves across New Mexico's high desert throughout the day. Painters have spoken about this light for well over a century, and she understands completely why Georgia O'Keeffe chose to make her life out in Abiquiú rather than return to the crowded studios of New York. That clean, gold-edged afternoon light does something generous to a face - it reveals character without cruelty, which is precisely what Hazel hopes her portraits do as well. She tries to carry that quality of light into her work even when she is painting far from the Southwest.
Hazel also loves returning to the old neighbourhoods of Albuquerque's Nob Hill, wandering the independent shops and stopping to talk with locals who always seem genuinely curious about her work. Those unhurried conversations remind her why portraiture matters - not as decoration, but as a sincere act of attention between one human being and another. New Mexico keeps teaching her that lesson, and she is grateful for every visit.
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 New Mexico.
Request a Free ConsultationNew Mexico Counties Hazel Paints Portraits In
Bernalillo, Catron, Chaves, Cibola, Colfax, Curry, De Baca, Doña Ana, Eddy, Grant, Guadalupe, Harding, Hidalgo, Lea, Lincoln, Los Alamos, Luna, McKinley, Mora, Otero, Quay, Rio Arriba, Roosevelt, San Juan, San Miguel, Sandoval, Santa Fe, Sierra, Socorro, Taos, Torrance, Union and Valencia.
Towns in New Mexico Where Hazel’s Portrait Clients Live
Santa Fe, Canyon Road, Tesuque, Las Campanas, Eldorado, Galisteo, Lamy, Cerrillos, Madrid, Los Alamos, Española, Abiquiú, Ojo Caliente, Chimayó, Truchas, Taos, Ranchos de Taos, Arroyo Seco, Angel Fire, Red River, Questa, Raton, Cimarron, Las Vegas NM, Pecos, Albuquerque, Old Town, Nob Hill, Corrales, Placitas, Rio Rancho, Bernalillo, Los Ranchos, Sandia Park, Tijeras, Belen, Socorro, Truth or Consequences, Silver City, Mesilla, Las Cruces, Alamogordo, Cloudcroft, Ruidoso, Lincoln, Roswell, Artesia, Carlsbad, Clovis, Portales, Gallup and Farmington.
Taos, Nicolai Fechin and the Portrait in New Mexico
New Mexico is the only American state where painters came for the light and then stayed for the people. What began as a landscape colony turned into one of the most serious portrait traditions in the country, and the reason was simply that the faces here were worth painting.
The land holds the oldest continuously inhabited communities in the United States. Taos Pueblo and Acoma have been lived in for something close to a thousand years. Nineteen pueblos remain, along with the Navajo Nation and the Jicarilla and Mescalero Apache. Spanish settlement began in 1598 and Santa Fe was founded in 1610, making it the oldest capital city in the country. Mexico held it from 1821, the United States from 1848, and statehood came only in 1912.
Before any easel painters arrived there was already a devotional portrait tradition. The santeros of the Rio Grande valley carved and painted saints - bultos and retablos - in a style entirely their own, and the craft has passed down through families in Chimayó, Truchas and Córdova for two hundred years. The Spanish Colonial Arts Society in Santa Fe holds the best collection of it.
The modern story starts with a broken wagon wheel. In 1898 Ernest Blumenschein and Bert Phillips were driving south from Denver when a wheel gave out twenty miles north of Taos. Blumenschein carried it into town for repair, looked around, and never really left. In 1915 they and four others founded the Taos Society of Artists.
What the Taos painters did was unusual for their time: they painted their Pueblo neighbours as individuals, sitting for their own portraits, named and specific. Joseph Henry Sharp, Eanger Irving Couse, Oscar Berninghaus and Walter Ufer produced a body of portrait work that treated its sitters with a seriousness American painting had rarely managed.
Then Nicolai Fechin arrived in 1927. Trained at the Imperial Academy in St. Petersburg under Repin, he came to Taos for his health and built a house there with his own hands, carving the doors and furniture in a mixture of Russian and Pueblo idiom. Fechin is one of the finest portrait painters of the twentieth century anywhere - the paint handling is astonishing, and the heads have a psychological weight that very few painters reach. His house at Taos is now a museum.
Mabel Dodge Luhan made Taos a destination. From 1917 she drew D. H. Lawrence, Willa Cather, Ansel Adams, Marsden Hartley, Georgia O’Keeffe and Carl Jung to her house at the edge of the pueblo. O’Keeffe first came in 1929, bought Ghost Ranch near Abiquiú, and spent the rest of her life there. The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe opened in 1997.
Santa Fe now has more art dealers per head than almost anywhere on earth. Canyon Road alone holds around a hundred galleries, and the annual Santa Fe Indian Market, running since 1922, is the largest gathering of Native artists in the world. There is also the New Mexico Museum of Art, whose 1917 Pueblo Revival building set the architectural tone for the whole city.
That architecture matters for portraits. Adobe walls, deep window reveals, low ceilings, white plaster and dark vigas produce a particular quality of interior light - soft, warm and directional. A portrait painted for a New Mexico house wants to be built for that light, and it looks quite different from one made for a panelled room in the East.
Commissions come from a handful of places. Santa Fe and its edges - Tesuque, Las Campanas, Eldorado, Galisteo. Taos and Arroyo Seco. Albuquerque’s Old Town, Nob Hill, Corrales and Placitas. Los Alamos, where the laboratory has drawn scientists from all over the world since 1943. Ruidoso and Lincoln County in the south, where the ranching families are. And the Mesilla valley near Las Cruces.
Institutional work is steady: the University of New Mexico, New Mexico State, St. John’s College Santa Fe, Los Alamos National Laboratory, the state capitol - whose art collection is genuinely good - the federal courts and the older Santa Fe and Albuquerque practices.
Equestrian and ranch portraits are common in the eastern and southern counties, and family groups are often set outdoors here in a way they rarely are elsewhere. New Mexicans tend to want the country in the picture, and given what the country looks like, that is hard to argue with.