Sister Gertrude Morgan drew on her experience as a Southern Baptist preacher to create art that illuminates and expands the gospel. Born in Lafayette, Alabama, she moved to New Orleans in 1939. There she worked with missionaries who promoted religious teachings through song and dance. She adopted the title “Sister” in the early 1940s, and ran a small chapel and center for orphans, runaways, and other children in need. In the mid-1950s, she proclaimed herself to be the bride of Christ and exclusively wore white in anticipation of their divine wedding. Between 1956 and 1974 she created an estimated eight hundred drawings, paintings, and sculptures to accompany her sermons.

Though not formally trained, Morgan created innovative art that incorporated the improvisational and musical tendencies from her faith. Her style is characterized by a bold color palette, repeating motifs, and multilevel architectural structures. Morgan worked with any materials available to her, including ink, crayons, watercolors, window or lamp shades, and found signs. She used calligraphy—a cornerstone of her compositions—to write messages atop her illustrations. While many of her works depict scenes from the Bible, she also created numerous self-portraits and autobiographical pieces. Morgan stopped painting in 1974, believing that God objected to the fame and financial gain she found through her artwork and wished her to focus on preaching and poetry.

Morgan’s practice received national attention following her inclusion in three major exhibitions in 1970: Twentieth-Century Folk Art at the American Folk Art Museum, New York; Dimensions of Black at La Jolla Museum of Art; and Symbols and Images: Contemporary Primitive Artists, a traveling exhibition organized by the American Federation of Arts. Her work has appeared in Studio Museum exhibitions such as Ritual and Myth: A Survey of African American Art (1982); The Fine Art of Collecting II (1985); and Harlem Postcards: Spring 2009 (2009).