Frank Morrison Art Gallery

From Spray Paint to the Louvre

Frank Morrison was born in Boston in 1971 and grew up in New Jersey, where he started tagging walls as a kid with a can of spray paint and no formal training. Dance came next. He toured the world as a breakdancer, and on a stop in Paris, he walked into the Louvre with his crew and saw what paint could do when someone gave it a lifetime. He went home and taught himself to paint. Decades later, he is one of the most collected African American artists working today, and he lives and paints in Atlanta, the same city we call home. We have been selling his work out of Atlanta since 2004, and every piece in this gallery ships from our Atlanta warehouse.

A Style You Can Recognize

Morrison stretches his figures. Legs go long, necks arch, hands hang loose and expressive, and the whole canvas tilts toward motion. He paints Black life in his own unique voice at its most stylish and most ordinary at the same time: kids double dutching, a barber mid fade, a woman stepping out for the night, a grandmother in her Sunday best. His work ranges from funny to reverent and beyond.

You will find several of his signature bodies of work in this gallery, including the Cutest Kids Collection, the Soul Sistas Collection, Urban Mannerisms, the Urban Jazz Collection, the Harlem Collection, and the Downtown 500 Series. Favorites like Afromation, Ladies' Night, Sankofa, I Am, and Return of the King live here alongside pieces most people have never seen in person.

An Award-Winning Children's Book Illustrator

If Morrison's style looks familiar to parents and teachers, there is a reason. He has illustrated more than twenty books for young readers and has been honored repeatedly by the American Library Association. He won the Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award for R-E-S-P-E-C-T in 2021 and again for Standing in the Need of Prayer in 2023. Jazzy Miz Mozetta, his very first book, earned him the Coretta Scott King and John Steptoe Award for New Talent in 2005. He received Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honors for Little Melba and Her Big Trombone in 2015 and Let the Children March in 2019, plus back-to-back Society of Illustrators Original Art Silver Medals for The Roots of Rap and R-E-S-P-E-C-T. In 2022, he wrote and illustrated his own book, Kick Push.

His fine art has been shown at Art Basel, SCOPE Miami Beach, and Red Dot, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem.

Limited Editions, Artist Proofs and Remarques

Morrison's work comes in a few different forms, and the difference matters when you are deciding what to add to your collection.

• Limited edition giclee: a numbered print from a run of a fixed size, signed by the artist. Once the run sells out, no more are made.
• Artist proof: a small set held back from the main edition, traditionally reserved for the artist. Artist proofs are scarcer than the standard numbered limited edition.
• Remarque: a print the artist has drawn or painted on by hand, so no two are identical.
• Hors de commerce: proofs marked as not for trade, used historically as gallery and presentation copies. The rarest tier we carry.
• Open edition: unnumbered prints with no cap on the run, priced so anyone can start a collection.

If you want the longer explanation before you buy, read our special note about limited editions.

Every limited edition we sell is signed and numbered by Frank Morrison and ships with a certificate of authenticity from the artist. Open editions are not signed or numbered and do not include a certificate.

More to Explore

Browse the full African American artwork catalog, meet the rest of our roster on the Shop by artist page, or narrow things down to limited edition artwork. You can also find Morrison's works inside our Black children art, Black family art and Black love art collections. He also designs several of the wall calendars in our African American calendars collection.

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