After a series of divine revelations in 1934, Sister Gertrude Morgan – self-taught artist, devout Southern Baptist, street proselytiser, musician, and poet – left her “earthly” husband in Georgia and settled in New Orleans. After adopting the name “Sister” in the early 1940s, she would also preach at her own ministry, where up until her death in 1980 she would paint and write poetry. In response to what she believed was a divine calling to use art as a preaching tool, Morgan claimed that she was instructed to become the bride of Christ and thus began dressing in a white nurse’s uniform in anticipation of the divine wedding, as she depicts in the painting untitled (SABBATH DAY Poem) (n.d.). This idiosyncratic personal mythology plays itself out in exuberantly colourful, playful, and highly original depictions of the everyday and the sacred, which Morgan conveyed on any surface she could find such as cardboard scraps, window blinds, paper fans, Styrofoam trays and her guitar case. Many of her paintings, like untitled (Revelation 7 Chap.) (c. 1970), are direct interpretations of the Bible; some like Revelation I JOHN (c. 1970) combine messy masses of figures, scrawled out scriptural quotations, and self-portraits of Morgan in her white nurse’s uniform, embracing or holding hands with Jesus, as in untitled (New Jerusalem) (c. 1960 / 1970).
Madeline Weisburg
