Cover of the comic, "Sister Gertrude Morgan: A Creative Calling." Illustration by Stephanie Hunton
Born in Alabama in 1900, Sister Gertrude Morgan expressed her Christian faith through her artwork. Equal parts musician, painter, and poet, these creative expressions helped share her sanctified journey. As a self-taught artist, she fascinated people by her unique approach to art, and what constituted a meaningful work of art.
Her journey from embracing religion as a teen to becoming a missionary and preacher in New Orleans, is beautifully rendered in the comic, “Sister Gertrude Morgan: A Creative Calling,” illustrated by Stephanie Hunton, a student at the Ringling College of Art and Design. Hunton’s strong palette combines deep colors that brings Morgan’s story to life. Its yellows and greens feel like the colors of hope that get punctuated with deeper blues and purples during times of difficulty, change, or great emotion. Hunton uses color the way a composer uses sound, to great emotional effect.
Music is a big part of the story—throughout Sister Gertrude Morgan’s life and throughout the comic —beginning with the portrait on the cover. Hunton portrays Morgan enthusiastically, if not ecstatically, playing the tambourine as part of her spiritual practice. With the same warmth that Morgan welcomed people into her prayer room, Hunton welcomes readers into the story. As the comic continues, it captures Sister Gertude Morgan’s personal, spiritual, and artistic developments in colorful illustrations that, in Hunton’s talented hands, portray a life well-lived... and well-drawn.
This comic is part of a series Drawn to Art: Tales of Inspiring Women Artists that illuminates the stories of women artists in the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Inspired by graphic novels, these short takes on artists’ lives were each drawn by a student-illustrator from the Ringling College of Art and Design.
We invite you to read the comic and share it with your friends and young people in your life.
