Mary Morvant has long been fascinated with the human face and its expressions. After more than 23 years as a portrait artist, her portfolio is like a family album of faces that are pensive, happy, proud, mischievous, innocent and shy, with a story to go with each. 

Though her mother was a portrait artist herself and an art teacher, Morvant didn’t consider art as a career. Instead she had her sights set on being an interior designer. But while at Louisiana Tech, she found herself taking many required art classes, which brought her inherent talent to surface. 

Within a month of later attending art school in Atlanta, she was painting portraits. Still, she recalls, “I didn’t understand anything about the art world and galleries, or how to present myself to potential clients. I took it slow and did two paintings a year.” In the meantime, there were children and it wasn’t until 1999, after raising them, that she began painting portraits professionally.

Today she works from her studio in St. Martinville, just a block from the legendary Evangeline Oak Park. As she leads me through the family’s Studio Gallery & Coffee Bar (run by one of her sons) she explains that the space was originally intended to be her work area. But being located so close to a tourist attraction, she saw it as an opportunity to pull in visitors, as well as locals. 

Her cozy, but organized, studio has the touch of an interior designer. I shared company with a large-scale pastel portrait of three children in casual clothing, standing on a sunny beach – her current project. Their expressions and lifelike images are why Morvant is sought out by so many through the world’s oldest and largest commissioned portrait company, Portraits, Inc. – and referred from family to family.

“This was on a beach in North Carolina,” she says, beginning a discussion of her process. “I don’t like to pose people; I prefer to capture them being natural. To get as many different expressions as possible, I take a lot of photos, sometimes 600 to 1,000 – something I couldn’t have done 20 years ago.”

Editing and composition are done on the computer back in her studio, where she adjusts the background, sometimes juxtaposes positions or, in the case of more than subject, merges photos. “It took five different photos to make the composition of these children that I’m now using to paint from,” Morvant informs.  

Before she even begins, several conversations with the client take place to learn specifications like formal or casual pose, indoor or outdoor setting, morning or evening light, the size of the painting and where it will be hung. “Initially, I like to spend several hours with the subject of a portrait to get a feel for what they’re like,” says the artist.

For most of her clients east of the Mississippi, she plans it out so that she arrives at the location a day ahead to scope out the lighting at the precise time of day the photo session is scheduled to begin. As she’s learned, “Beautiful light makes a beautiful painting. The best light is in the first and last hours of the day, so I have to know the times of sunrise and sunset in each city that I travel. The mood of a painting is very important to me, and the biggest mood comes from the person. There are some paintings I look forward to starting just because of the lighting or an expression I see.”

Like many portrait artists, Morvant finds herself painting both ends of the age spectrum, but has a fondness for children. “They’re honest and unpretentious,” she notes. “I love catching an expression when they’re not paying attention. It often takes two days to photograph young children before they settle down and relax around me.” 

In that off-guard moment of any session, Morvant searches for an authentic expression. “I love every kind of expression, because they are expressions of the soul,” she says.  I’ll see what I’m looking for when I get home and examine the photos. I choose a photo that represents what I think is the essence of a personality.”  Her keen eye in picking up on the most unique aspect of a personality results in a painting that makes the viewer wonder what the subject is thinking. 

From the start, her clients are made aware of her 12- to 18-month turnaround – sometimes longer depending on several variables. “My broker keeps me busy, sending me a number of contracts a year,” she says. Currently there are 20 portraits on her calendar, that she will work on at different stages, to complete by August 2024. “If you put your heart and soul into it, portraits are very time consuming – not like painting a landscape or a vase of flowers,” she explains. 

It says a lot for tradition that in this digital age, there is still a strong demand for painted portraits. Morvant notes that most of the clients who commission her are continuing a family tradition. She sees a prevalence of it more in the eastern part of the country, where she’s noticed history seems to be more celebrated. “I don’t have that kind of business on the west coast,” she remarks. As you would suspect, most of her clients are wealthy, but she says, “There are some families who will save up a long time to hire me for a head portrait that is very meaningful to them.” 

“There is such a joy in delivering the final photo of a portrait to a family that is already ‘over the moon’ with what they’ve seen along the way,” she shares. “Painting is where I feel most comfortable in a producwtive way. This is what I’m here for; this is what I was born for.”