Cover Artist: Morgan Gray

The Stuff Morgan Paints:

Timeless Beauty in the Palate of Modern Luxury

Written by Cayman Clevenger; Photos by Sebastien Bonnot

In the quiet, sunlit confines of Morgan Gray’s greater-New Orleans home and studio, she greets me at the door, wearing an accidental masterpiece—splattered and swiped with layers of vibrant, dried paint. It’s the same paint that defines the brilliant artwork that has earned her critical acclaim and more than 120,000 followers on social media. Gray’s home is like your coolest friend’s Pinterest page writ large, with gallery walls filled with Gray’s work, works by artists who inspire her, and thrifted pieces that create a stunning visual tapestry—a feast for the eyes. Philodendrons and pothos cascade from carefully placed planters, bringing the lush flora often depicted in her paintings into the world in which she creates. Gray, like her art, is spontaneous, colorful, and honest.

Gray’s work is intuitive, feminine, and richly textured. It defies simple categorization, although, when pressed, she settles on “expressionism with portraiture and abstraction.” Her palette is instantly recognizable, dominated by peaches, burnt sienna, olive greens, and periwinkle blues, colors that convey both warmth and complexity. “I paint what I like and what I would put up in my own home,” Gray says; a statement modestly understating the sophistication of her visual language. Her art resonates deeply, not merely through its aesthetics but through its layered subtleties and inviting charm.

Recurrent motifs in Morgan Gray’s work—suns, moons, swans, checkerboards, and classical busts—reflect a deep affinity for timeless beauty and the divine. These symbols serve as intuitive anchors, blending celestial wonder, vintage nostalgia, and a reverence for art history into each layered composition.

“If something looks off, I just keep layering until it feels right. A mistake usually ends up being what makes the piece interesting,” Gray shares. Much of the texture in Gray’s work emerges from instinctive revisions—moments where corrections evolve into defining features. The end result is polished and intentional, but never overworked—not effortless, but resolved, with every correction buried beneath a finish that feels inevitable.

Her canvases—often set within ornate, thrifted frames—bridge the old and the new, inviting nostalgia while subverting it. Gray’s incorporation of vintage frames, sourced from estate sales and hidden gems like Red, White & Blue thrift store, is central to her identity as an artist. It began out of necessity and resourcefulness but has become emblematic of her approach: reclaiming the discarded, re-envisioning the forgotten. “There’s this frame someone was donating, and I’m turning that into an entire art piece,” Gray explains. “The way the painting comes out of the frame, and the way the paint plays with the texture of the frame. It’s drama. It’s interest. It makes the art more one-of-a-kind.”

Gray’s artwork extends beyond the canvas itself, with each carefully selected thrifted frame becoming an integral part of the piece. She intentionally incorporates the ornate textures and vintage character of the frames into her compositions, painting directly onto them so that the boundary between frame and artwork dissolves, creating a unified, immersive aesthetic experience.

Gray’s fascination with Greek and Roman sculpture aligns seamlessly with her broader ethos of renewal and timelessness. Her depictions of classical busts and goddesses, figures borrowed from her adventures in Italy, are rendered in fluid, expressive strokes that breathe contemporary life into historical icons. The result is a body of work that is simultaneously classical and refreshingly modern, as though fragments of antiquity have collided with modern luxury.

Gray’s artistic journey was far from traditional. She did not have her first art class until college. Born and raised in Berwick, Louisiana—a small town offering little artistic exposure—Gray had not formally painted until her junior year of high school. Even then, painting was a hobby rather than an envisioned career. It was not until a revelatory conversation at LSU, where she initially enrolled as a Mass Communication major, that she realized painting could be more than just a pastime. “I met a girl who was a painting and drawing major,” she recalls, “and I thought, wait, you can do that?”

The ensuing switch to a BFA program was transformative. Classes in still life, abstract painting, and figure drawing under demanding professors shaped her distinct technique of layering and texture-building. Inspired by Willem de Kooning, Picasso, and Cezanne, Gray’s education gave her the rigorous discipline and foundational skill set that now underpin her intuitive style.

Yet it was her own experimentation, rather than formal education alone, that defined her breakthrough moment. During the pandemic’s isolation, Gray began sharing short, captivating videos of her process on social media. Almost overnight, her distinctive “face abstracts” caught the public imagination, gathering millions of views and rapidly building a following of over 100,000. The visibility provided by these platforms catapulted her career, enabling her to move beyond commissions dictated by client requests to freely pursuing her artistic visions.

Despite her incredible success, Gray remains refreshingly grounded, humorously self-deprecating, and deeply committed to the authenticity that made her viral to begin with. Her Instagram handle, “MorganPaintsStuff,” originally chosen as a lighthearted deflection from the vulnerability of sharing art publicly, has stuck precisely because it encapsulates her approachable yet profound creativity.

Gray has ambitious plans for future compositions. Inspired by vintage Vogue prints and thrifted textiles, she envisions projects incorporating repurposed fabrics, moving deeper into mixed media. This multimedia approach would complement her ongoing exploration of revitalizing discarded or forgotten works of art with her stylized abstraction—balancing her signature intuitive brushwork with deliberate compositional structure.

In person, Gray speaks modestly of her talent, quick to credit luck or timing for her early viral success. Yet the undeniable brilliance of her work speaks louder than humble deflections. Her compositions possess a dreamlike quality, their vibrant colors and layered brushstrokes resonating with viewers who invariably find something new with each glance.

Ultimately, Gray’s art captures a deeply human truth: beauty does not require justification or exhaustive explanation to profoundly resonate. Her intuitive approach allows the viewer room to explore their own meanings, guided subtly by the emotional honesty she imbues in each stroke and swirl of color. Morgan Gray’s work, then, is less about definitive statements and more about intuitive dialogues between artist and audience, past and present, nostalgia and modern luxury. It is a dialogue that is just beginning, and one that promises to evolve beautifully and timelessly, for years to come.

Morgan Gray’s work is on view at the Orleans Gallery located at 603 Julia Street in the heart of New Orleans’ arts district. The Orleans Gallery Grand Opening Celebration is May 3 from 6-9, and is open to all!

Gray’s solo exhibition will debut during White Linen Night 2025 as part of the gallery’s mission to celebrate the vibrant art of the modern South.