Gertrude Morgan
[6] Sister Morgan's first documented involvement with religion came in her late teens, when she joined the Rose Hill Memorial Baptist Church, a local congregation in Columbus, Georgia.
The two women were involved in the Holiness and Sanctified movement, an African American faith in which the activities of music, song and dance were central.
The three women soon established a mission and orphanage at Mother Parker's house at 533 Flake Avenue in Lower Gentilly, then on the outskirts of New Orleans.
(In Sister Gertrude's paintings, the three women are pictured in their black robes, adorned with white collars, cuffs and waist ties).
As Gentilly was a fairly rural area at this time, they raised livestock and grew vegetables on the land surrounding the large house.
They held neighborhood feasts at the Orphanage, where the 'Prophetesses' (as Sister Morgan would later name them in her paintings) would play the piano, drums, cymbals and beat tambourines.
[6] In addition to street preaching, the three women visited Orleans Parish Prison, providing spiritual guidance for inmates, as well as traveling to other towns in Louisiana and Texas for church camps and meetings.
After leaving Gentilly, Sister Morgan roomed in various houses, mostly in the Lower Ninth Ward, an historically African American neighborhood in Orleans Parish.
Eventually she settled at 5444 North Dorgenois street in the Lower Ninth, in a single shotgun house with the owner of the property, Jennie Johnson.
Her works are characterized by their lack of the use of formal techniques such as perspective and definition of light and shadow, giving them a flat, two dimensional quality.
She painted and drew using acrylics, tempera, ballpoint pen, watercolors, crayon, colored and lead pencils and felt tip markers.
The fact that she was self-taught, coupled with her choice of materials as well as her style and subject matter have led her to be characterized as a naive, folk, visionary, vernacular and outsider artist.
Similarly, her paintings that document her childhood, early adulthood and first years in New Orleans are inscribed with the narratives of specific events, that often reference her evangelical activities.
William A. Fagaly writes, "The apocalyptic text of the Book of Revelation offers a plethora of visionary images: the Apocalypse and its four horsemen, the Antichrist, the Whore of Babylon, the Beast (with the mark 666), the heavenly book of seven seals, Armageddon, the return of the Jews to the Holy Land, the millennial kingdom of Christ on Earth, and the New Jerusalem.
The holy city of New Jerusalem "coming down from God out of heaven" was consistently depicted as a multi storey apartment building in her compositions.
He invited her to perform and exhibit work in his art gallery after coming upon her shouting on a street corner with a paper megaphone.
[8] In 1970 poet and performer Rod McKuen, a fan and collector of Morgan's work used thirteen of her illustrations to accompany a book of Bible quotations, God's Greatest Hits.
[7] The three-person exhibit displayed over 75 of Sister Morgan's paintings, alongside fellow visionary artists Clementine Hunter and Bruce Brice.
In 1982 the exhibition Black Folk Art in America, 1930-1980 featured twenty artists (including Sister Morgan) and close to 400 paintings and sculptures.
The exhibition was accompanied by the publication of a catalogue containing essays by William A. Fagaly, Jason A. Berry and Helen M. Shannon.
