Carrying Beauty Home: Recap of the 2026 Portrait Society of America Conference

For many artists, the annual conference hosted by the Portrait Society of America feels a bit like summer camp, family reunion, graduate seminar, and artistic revival all rolled into one. Every year I leave inspired, exhausted, humbled, and deeply grateful.

This year’s conference in Atlanta carried a particular depth for me, because 2026 marks ten years since I first joined the faculty.

The Face-Off is the PSOA's opening event. It's always charged with the best kind of energy! It also happens to be how I made my faculty debut in 2016, and I was thrilled to be back this year.

Thrilled with how my 3 hour Face Off painting of Leslie turned out! And she was too, as she made sure to outbid anyone else who tried to buy it! (By the way, my tee shirt says "Buy Art, Not Cocaine," courtesy of Artefex, who supplied the panels for my demos over the weekend)

It's always thrilling seeing my name up on the big screen!

I still remember how surreal it felt in 2016 to suddenly find myself among artists whose work I had admired for years—artists whose books sat on my shelves, whose paintings I had studied obsessively, whose names felt almost mythic to me at the time. Back then, I often felt like the youngest kid at the grown-ups’ table: grateful to be invited, but not entirely convinced I belonged there.

Something was different this year.

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when it happened, but I felt it most strongly during the Friday evening panel discussion with Quang Ho, Daniel Keys, and Frances Bell, moderated by Jeff Hein. Sitting there among artists I respect so deeply, I realized I no longer felt like I was merely “included.” For the first time, I truly felt like an equal among my peers.

In a late-night roundtable discussion, Quang, Jeff, Frances, Daniel and I discussed all things art and life.

Not in the sense that insecurities disappear—they never completely do for artists, I think—but in the sense that experience, years of work, and hard-won growth had slowly accumulated into something solid. I no longer felt like I needed permission to occupy that space.

There were many moments throughout the week that reinforced that feeling. During my breakout demo with Louis Carr, audience members asked thoughtful questions and stayed afterward to continue the conversation. People came up to me throughout the conference to share that they had followed my work for years, or that a particular painting had meant something to them. Those interactions are always humbling, but this year they felt different somehow. Less like a surprise. More like stepping fully into a role I’ve slowly been growing into for a decade.

Louis Carr and I got to paint 10-year-old Innis for a main stage breakout session on Friday morning.

One of the greatest joys of the week, however, had nothing to do with me.

It was witnessing Rose Frantzen win the grand prize.

Most of us knew before it was announced. Her portrait carried not only extraordinary technical mastery, but profound humanity. The room erupted when her name was called, and rightly so. It felt like the collective recognition of an artist who has quietly shaped and elevated contemporary figurative painting for decades.

Rose has been my art hero for years. Here we are with her husband Chuck Morris, so grateful and happy for her big win!

What moved me most was not simply the award itself, but what it meant to her.

Artists are often perceived from the outside as confident people, but the truth is that even the greatest among us wrestle privately with questions of worth, legitimacy, and belonging. Rose spoke openly about having wondered whether she truly belonged among the artists she most admired. Hearing that from someone I consider one of the greatest living painters was both heartbreaking and strangely comforting. Perhaps that longing to belong never entirely leaves us.

Watching her receive that standing ovation felt deeply emotional to me. Her win felt like a win for all of us.

The conference itself was filled with the usual whirlwind of demos, critiques, late-night conversations, shared meals, hugs in hotel hallways, and those fleeting but meaningful moments of connection that remind artists—who so often work alone in studios—that we are part of something larger.

And then, suddenly, the week ended in tragedy.

As I boarded my flight home, I received news of the death of someone in my family. The shock of it hit with brutal force. One moment I had been reflecting on a week filled with beauty, celebration, artistic achievement, and friendship. The next, all of it seemed to collapse inward.

My first thought was simple: none of this matters. The awards, the demos, the accolades, the paintings, the applause—all of it suddenly felt painfully small in the face of real human suffering.

But grief has a way of stripping things down to their essence. And after the initial shock settled, another realization emerged alongside it:

Art does matter.

Not because of prestige or recognition or competition results. Not because of résumés or titles or social media attention. Those things are fleeting.

Art matters because human beings need beauty. We need meaning and connection. We need reminders that sorrow is survivable and that life, despite all its fragility, remains luminous.

In times of grief, people turn instinctively toward music, poetry, stories, paintings, photographs. We gather around beauty because it helps us carry what otherwise feels unbearable.

I think that’s why this year’s conference affected me so deeply. Beneath all the professional development and technical discussions was something much more profound: a gathering of people committed to paying attention to humanity... and to one another.

Ten years after first joining the faculty, I left Atlanta not simply feeling more established as an artist, but more convinced than ever of why this work matters in the first place.

And perhaps that is the real prize.

Photo Credits: professional photos by Robin Damore