Fort Worth’s Go-To Muralist Katie Murray Takes A New Direction With Candid Portraits and Fashion Illustration
The Artist is Focusing on People in "Friends in Their Homes"
BY Edward Brown // 02.03.25Artist Katie Murray combines her love of painting and people through her portrait series Friends in Their Home. (Photo by Reverie Photo Co)
Katie Murray’s vibrant murals have become iconic landmarks throughout Fort Worth, and few bustling areas of the city are untouched by her artistry. While she credits her murals with establishing her name and reputation as an artist, her recent creative pursuits have expanded into fashion illustration and portraiture.
At a recent Kemo Sabe pop-up event in the Stockyards, her vibrant illustrations were featured on bespoke silk scarves sold by Fort Worth-based Wild Silks. Murray began working for the boutique fashion line’s founder Christi Brasswell last year when the two designed and fabricated Hotel Drover’s first-ever silk scarf line. She recently illustrated Wild Silks’ first Fort Worth Sketches Scarf, featuring images of several iconic landmarks. The first run of 50 quickly sold out.
The increasing demand for her talents as an illustrator and portrait artist comes at a time when Murray says she has the “want and desire” to pursue new directions in her career, a direction that marks a return to her favorite subject matter as an artist — people.

Friends in Their Home
From her early years as an art student through her time in graduate school, Katie Murray says her favorite artistic subjects have always been people.
“Early on, I fell in love with drawing and painting people,” she recalls. “When I went to get my masters in painting, I decided to do portraits and candid portraits, specifically. I was young. I was going to parties and taking candid pictures of people. I loved painting more mature adults because they have so much more character. The wrinkles and marks on their faces add so much more texture. I was playing with color in a way that I hadn’t before. When you look at somebody, you see brown, tan, or white. I was adding purples, blues, and greens and finding all the colors within the shadows.”
Her portraits took a pause after graduate school as Murray focused on raising her children and teaching. In early 2020, Murray began a new portrait series she calls Friends in Their Home. She has been commissioned to create 10 works for the series so far, and her early love of candid photographs shines through the paintings that feature subjects caught mid-sentence speaking to the viewer or in soft repose. Behind every work are bright colors and textures that activate the image — a lively and inviting effect not commonly found in traditional portraiture.

“When we think about portraits, we automatically go to that traditional oil sitting portrait. When the Barack Obama portraits came out, it showed the world that portraits can be creative and playful. There are a thousand other ways to make portraits. Because I’ve studied art for so long, I have exposure to contemporary portraits.”
Murray says that Portraiture is a profoundly personal experience for the artist and subject. The painter says she enjoys the interactions with the people she paints, whether it’s finding the right part of their house to set up in or just chatting. Unveiling the finished paintings is always fraught with anxious emotions, although her clients have all enjoyed the finished products, she says. These days, Murray doesn’t promote herself as a muralist, although she still considers individual commissions as they come along. The focus on designing scarves and painting portraits allows her to have full creative control over her time and creations. The Friends in Their Home series allows Murray to combine her love of painting with her life-long fascination with people.
“I love listening to their stories, knowing what makes them tick,” she says. “I want to take that and translate it into what’s happening [in my paintings]. Early on, I wasn’t confident enough to know that I could tell someone, ‘This is what I’m doing.’ I’m more confident now about my style. It took me years to know that I could do this.”