Robert attended the distinguished Sidwell Friends School in Washington DC, and Tulane University; he was a staff reporter for the Atlanta Journal Constitution, an editor at Atlanta Magazine, a features editor for Creative Loafingin Atlanta, and a speech writer for former Georgia Governor Roy Barnes. He has been a resident on Tybee Island for the past four years where he lives with his wife, Heather, and their children. For the past thirteen years, Robert has been with the Georgia Ports Authority and from both vantage points he finds the beauty on the river that feeds his current artistic inspiration.

He’s known a lifetime of light reflected on rivers. Robert acknowledges, “I grew up on the Potomac, went to school on the Mississippi, lived on the Chattahoochee, and now live on Tybee Island at the mouth of the Savannah River; like a river rat - I’ve always lived on the water. On Tybee I’m surrounded by atmosphere; I feel like I’m immersed in the natural world. I follow the river home from work, often alongside the vessels plying the river; sometimes I chase them and sometimes they chase me. When I paint, I’m able to plug into this natural world, I have to sort of be a medium to do that, and then I look forward to seeing how it will turn out.” 

In March of 2014, Savannah Calling: New Works by Robert Claiborne Morris and Charles Ellis, opened at the Ships of the Sea Maritime Museum in Savannah. Robert showed ten paintings created along the thirty miles between the port terminal and the sea. In 2016 there will be part two of the exhibit at the Maritime Museum, entitled Wonders In The Deep. This upcoming show will explore the mystery and magic of what happens out there in the ocean and to the vessels that ply it.

Imagery ranging from forthright enormity of the container ships at night bearing down on you, through the romanticism of their setting out on their journey across the world cradled by sunrise colors, to the marsh and river abstracts that make you salivate with the intensity of their sensual motion and an aurora borealis-ness to their light and complexity, to the ethereal and wistful soft misty images of ships sliding through the fog as they go on about their business, is all captivating.

Such are the complexities and intricacies of the man himself, efficient, businesslike, impeccably attired, his appearance is the face of his canvas. Add the paint and you will find the husband, the father, the friend. Mix up some of his secret recipe varnish and realize that for a published poet, his art is his visual poetry. The final sealing coat is his humor, his intellect, his awareness, and his spirituality that all combine to make his paintings raw and personal.