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USA
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New Orleans, LA
Everlasting Gospel Mission - Sister Gertrude Morgan
1900-1980
Mixed media
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Information:
Her paintings -- technically primitive, with bold colors and totemic figures -- have drawn crowds into New York's American Folk Art Museum. Cultural arbiters have scribbled their praise. Describing her pictures as "painted epiphanies" and "hugely endearing," Michael Kimmelman in The New York Times advised readers that "you don't have to be religious to appreciate the inborn eloquence … You only have to accept that painting, when it comes from the heart and is so clearly genuine, can lift the soul." N. F. Karlins, writing for Artnet magazine, more succinctly called it all "terrific."
Sister Gertrude Morgan's Preservation Hall Recordings reminds those who once heard her summons to repent, and those who came too late to hear her at all, that there was power in her voice as well as in her paintbrush.
Let's Make a Record reveals Sister Gertrude Morgan in all her power. Recorded in a bare bones setting, with only her tambourine and the Holy Spirit at hand, these fourteen tracks -- not quite songs, not quite sermons -- stir the soul more deeply than most musicians could manage when playing together. But there's a story behind these performances, one that traces back to Sister Gertrude's remarkable life and to the ties that would bind her to a pivotal figure in the history of Preservation Hall.
She was born Gertrude Williams in 1900 and raised in Lafayette, Louisiana, about 130 miles west of New Orleans. The seventh child of a poor farmer, Gertrude left school in third grade to work the fields with her family. Her ties to the Baptist Church endured, however, through her youth and after her marriage in to Will Morgan in 1928. And her fascination with art, which began when she used to draw figures in the dirt outside her home as a child, never diminished.
As Sister Gertrude's zeal grew, her earthly binds dissolved. Somehow -- it's not clear how -- her husband eased out of the picture, which was perhaps just as well, given Gertrude's conviction that in 1957 God had called her to become the bride of Christ. With that she abandoned the black dresses with white collars that had been wearing and switched to wearing a nurse's uniform, white and pure, filled her house with white furniture, and began painting even more prolifically.
Her depictions of Biblical scenes mixed elemental images, lines of Scripture, and contemporary metaphors: The sky above an urban scene might be filled with passages from Revelation, hovering angels, and an airplane piloted by Jesus en route to Heaven. Inevitably they caught the attention of Larry Borenstein, a local art dealer, who started exhibiting her pictures at his gallery on St. Peter Street -- the same facility that he would soon turn over to Allan and Sandra Jaffe, under whose management it became Preservation Hall in 1961.
At the age of eighty she passed away in her sleep. Following a traditional New Orleans parade and funeral, she was laid to rest beneath an unmarked grave in a pauper's cemetery near the airport, which may have made it easier for Gertrude to catch that flight she foresaw toward a better world.
Considered one of "50 Classic Outsiders", Raw Vision Sourcebook, 2002"
Excerpted from her web site
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Bibliography:
Museums
African American Museum, Dallas, TX
Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, LA
Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI
American Folk Art Museum, NY
New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC
References
"Black Folk Art in America 1930-1980" by Jane Livingston and John Beardsley, published for the Corcoran Gallery of Art, 1982.
William A. Fagaly's hardcover folio book "Tools of Her Ministry: The Art of Sister Gertrude Morgan"
"Let's Make a Record" —Sister Gertrude Morgan's Preservation Hall Recordings
"Museum of American Folk Art Encyclopedia of Twentieth Century American Folk Art and Artists" by Chuck and Jan Rosenak, Abbeville Press, New York, 1990.
"20th Century American Folk, Self Taught, and Outsider Art" by Betty-Carol Sellen, Cynthia J. Johnson, Neal-Schuman Publishers, New York, 1993.
"Souls Grown Deep: African American vernacular Art of the South", Vol 1, Arnett, et al, 1995.
"Contemporary American Folk Art - A Collector's Guide" Chuck and Jan Rosenak, Abbeville Press, 1996.
"Self-Made Worlds: Visionary Environments" by Roger Manley and Mark Sloan, Aperture, New York, 1997.
"Pictured in My Mind", exhibit catalog, 1998
"Flying Free: Twentieth-Century Self-Taught Art from the Collection of Ellin and Baron Gordon" by Ellin Gordon, Barbara L. Luck and Tom Patterson, exhibit catalog for The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center, 1997.
"Self-Taught Artists of the 20th Century", exhibit catalog, 1998
"The Intuitive Eye, The Mendelsohn Collection" by Ricco/Maresca Gallery, 2000.
"Let it Shine: Self-Taught Art from the T. Marshall Hahn Collection" by Lynne E. Spriggs, Joanne Cubbs, Lynda Roscoe Hartigan, Susan Mitchell Crawley, Michael E. Shapiro and Peter Harholdt, organized by the High Museum of Art, 2001.
"50 Classic Outsiders", Raw Vision Sourcebook, 2002.
"American Self-Taught Art: An Illustrated Analysis of 20th Century Artists and Trends with 1,319 Capsule Biographies" by Florence Laffal and Julius Laffal, 2003.
Slotin Folk Art Auction Catalog, Masterpiece Sale, November 4, 2006 |
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Credit: Slotin Folk Art |
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Revelation Chart Ink and paint on cardboard - very well-executed with self-portrait in center flanked by chorus of angels. Archival frame - image is 12 x 6. Frame: 18.25 x 12.5. Colors are strong. No damage or fading. Image also contains four horsemen and biblical writing. Excellent piece.
Credit: Slotin Folk Art |
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Revelations 4th Chapter
Graphite and paint on paper. Purchased from artist - nice large piece in very good condition with strong colors. A Sister Gertrude Masterpiece. Nice image. Image: 21 x 10 Frame: 27.5 x 16.5 Archival frame.
Credit: Slotin Folk Art |
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