Morris Blackburn was born in Philadelphia, PA, beginning his art education at age twenty at the Graphic Sketch Club (now the Samuel S. Fleisher Art Memorial) and the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art (now the University of the Arts). Later, at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA), he studied painting with Henry McCarter, drawing with Daniel Garber, and sketching with Arthur B Carles, who became his friend and mentor. Blackburn was a printmaker, muralist, and pioneer in the development of silkscreen printing in the early 1940s. He was a member of the faculty at the Philadelphia Museum School and PAFA.