Morgan Humphrey

AQ is our series of hardcover catalogs celebrating extraordinary women artists. Available on Amazon. Visit the AQ Catalog Webpage to learn more.

Morgan Humphrey is featured in AQ Volume VII.

I’m a self-taught oil painter from the Pacific Northwest. My work is shaped by my own life and by observing the ways people live and carry their stories. I’m especially drawn to how memory lingers across girlhood and womanhood, and how those early identities ripple into adulthood.

My most recent body of work focuses on cowboy archetypes—using them as vessels for humor, nostalgia, and memory. Through this series, and in my work more broadly, I return to themes of intimacy, aging, and the shifting space between how we feel inside and how we appear to others.

Working in oil paint and oil pastel, I often layer realism with pastel marks that feel more raw and immediate. These lines sit on top of the painted surface like memory itself—decorative at times, disruptive at others—suggesting the ways the past continues to press into the present. Whether through a child in a propeller hat, an older cowboy pausing in reflection, or the quiet weight of a self-portrait, I’m searching for the layered truths that shape us. For me, painting is a way of honoring the complexity of being human—a reminder that identity is not fixed but carried, reimagined, and lived in over time.


Visit Morgan’s website