Morgan Samuel Price began her career in 1968 as an illustrator for Hallmark Cards and later became an art director for a small daily newspaper, the News Herald, in Lake County, Ohio. Today she’s an accomplished fine artist and an innovative teacher who says her methods create not only better painters but better thinkers as well.
Price, a graduate of the Ringling School of Art and Design in Sarasota, painted this issue’s cover image, The Wedding Gift, which features sculptor Albin Polasek’s enduring Emily. The bronze figure is of a kneeling nude woman playing a harp on which delicate streams of flowing water give the illusion of strings.
You’ve probably seen the statute in the entry courtyard at the Albin Polasek Museum & Sculpture Gardens. Or, if not there, then you’ve surely seen the same statue on the small bricked oval pool in North Central Park.
That version of Emily was recast from a plaster replica and installed in 1983 as a gift to the city from the Albin Polasek Foundation. It was dedicated the following year to honor the 25th anniversary of the Winter Park Sidewalk Art Festival.
Price called her painting The Wedding Gift because the statue was, in fact, a wedding gift for the widowed sculptor’s second wife, Emily Muska Kubat Polasek, whose facial features appear to be reflected in the work.
When her 86-year-old husband died in 1965, Emily continued to live in the home—which had become a working museum when the foundation was formed in 1961—and sometimes personally conducted tours. She died in 1988 at age 91.
“The scene that day stopped me in my tracks,” says Price. “That afternoon, the backdrop behind the sculpture shifted into a beautiful range of lavender to periwinkle—soft, atmospheric and impossible to ignore. Against those cooler hues, the sculpture felt even more present and luminous.”
The Wedding Gift was completed in 2019, when Price was in town for the Winter Park Paint Out, the museum’s signature annual fundraiser during which 20 acclaimed plein air artists gather to capture scenes either on the museum’s grounds or in other locations. Amazingly, of all the familiar local sights that have graced our cover, we have never before shown Emily.
That oversight has been rectified thanks to Price, who discovered her passion (and her gift) for teaching while living in Ardmore, Oklahoma—where there were no galleries, no museums, no art stores and no art centers. She says: “I realized that teaching was not only a skill but an art form in itself.”
Consequently, she began holding classes on how to paint for adults and children, and helped to establish a flourishing visual arts scene in a gritty city mainly known for its oil refineries. Eventually, the town had four thriving art supply stores and, she adds, “nearly everyone had taken up painting.”
Over the course of four decades as a working artist, Price has quantified the creative process through numbers. She’ll tell you that you make 22 decisions with each brushstroke—and can name them all. She has also identified the 23 most common mistakes that beginning painters make—and still closely examines her own work to make certain that she has avoided making them.
In addition, Price has authored two essential instruction books, Turn on the Light: A Touchstone to Plein Air Painting and Oil with a Basic Palette, and produced a library of educational videos and DVDs. As an in-person teacher who has mentored hundreds of artists, she describes herself as “always the most grateful person in the room.”
Winner of an array of awards, Price is a member of Allied Artists of America, the American Artist Professional League (where she was named a Fellow), the Pastel Society of America and the American Society of Marine Artists, among other organizations.
“It’s not what you see,” adds Price. “It’s how you see it. Beauty isn’t confined to famous landmarks. It’s in the world right outside your door.” Or, in this case, right in front of the Polasek. Check out Price’s work in person at Gallery on Park Fine Art or online at morgansamuelprice.com.