This biography from the Archives of AskART:
|  Born in Lafayette, Alabama, Gertrude Morgan was inspired to paint from religious conviction after what she described as a "divine visitation" in her kitchen in 1934. She, with only a third-grade education, then left her family and at age 37, became an evangelist. Two years later, she settled in New Orleans where she became a street preacher of the gospel for a fundamentalist sect.
She started an orphanage and built a small church. Inspired by what she called the "divine word," she dressed in and surrounded herself with items of white, a mode of dress until her death when she was age 80. In keeping with this appearance, she asserted that she had been instructed to become the bride of Christ.
After 1965, when her orphanage was destroyed by a hurricane, she focused on painting, something that had always held her interest and something that brought her national attention thanks to her art dealer, Larry Borenstein. He discovered her preaching gospel on a street corner about 1960 and invited her to show her work at his French Quarter Gallery. Her combined pictures with Bible-verse calligraphy were intended to instruct the faithful, and many of her paintings show her, a black woman in white clothing, holding the hand of Christ.
"Of her miraculous talents, Morgan said: 'Just be sure and give Jesus credit for what I do. . . .He's the one that made me do it' " (Sheets)
Source:
"American Art Review", February 2002
"New York Times", August 15, 2004, 'Books in Brief', review by Hilarie M. Sheets |
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Gertrude Morgan is also mentioned in these AskART essays:
Black American Artists
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