Title of Piece: The Courage to Rise – Power Re-Imagined
Artist: Maria North-Morgan
Size: 24x48
Medium: Acrylic on Canvas
Price: $1,500
About the Artist:
Maria North Morgan Maria North Morgan is a multidisciplinary artist who lives and works between Kansas City, Missouri, and Des Moines, Iowa. A lifelong Kansas City resident, she is one of the inaugural studio artists at the Zhou B Art Center. Trained as a civil rights attorney and currently serving as a healthcare executive for a safety-net hospital, Maria has dedicated her professional life to advocating for equity, access, and justice for underserved and marginalized communities. Her artistic practice is a natural extension of that work—one rooted in storytelling, resistance, and collective healing. Maria began her artistic journey during the 2020 global shutdown, creating her first fluid art series amid the George Floyd civil rights protests. Painting during a moment of national reckoning, she turned to abstraction as a way to process grief, anger, resilience, and hope. Her work captures the lived experience of being Black in America, often holding space for contradiction—beauty and pain, strength and vulnerability, rage and restoration. As a Black woman artist, Maria uses movement, layering, and color to explore identity, power, and liberation as both personal and communal pursuits. Maria’s work has been featured in private and corporate collections across the country and highlighted in KC Studio Magazine. She has exhibited at the InterUrban ArtHouse, Johnson County Museum, Leedy-Voulkos Art Center, Bruce R. Watkins Cultural Heritage Center, and the Zhou B Art Center in Kansas City’s historic 18th & Vine Jazz District. Through her art, Maria seeks to create spaces for dialogue, reflection, and connection—inviting viewers to consider their role in building more just, compassionate, and liberated communities.
About the Piece:
The Courage to Rise – Power Re-Imagined is a reflection of the moment when survival transforms into self-determination. This work explores the quiet, often unseen process of reclaiming one’s power—after it has been challenged, fragmented, or diminished by systems, experiences, or expectations beyond one’s control. This piece honors courage not as a singular act, but as a continuous choice: to rise, to re-imagine identity, and to move forward with purpose. It invites one to consider power not as something granted or taken, but as something internal—reclaimed through self-trust, community, and transformation. Ultimately, The Courage to Rise – Power Re-Imagined is an affirmation of becoming—of honoring the journey from fracture to flow, and the strength found in choosing oneself again and again.
Title of Piece: The Courage to Rise – Power Re-Imagined
Artist: Maria North-Morgan
Size: 24x48
Medium: Acrylic on Canvas
Price: $1,500
About the Artist:
Maria North Morgan Maria North Morgan is a multidisciplinary artist who lives and works between Kansas City, Missouri, and Des Moines, Iowa. A lifelong Kansas City resident, she is one of the inaugural studio artists at the Zhou B Art Center. Trained as a civil rights attorney and currently serving as a healthcare executive for a safety-net hospital, Maria has dedicated her professional life to advocating for equity, access, and justice for underserved and marginalized communities. Her artistic practice is a natural extension of that work—one rooted in storytelling, resistance, and collective healing. Maria began her artistic journey during the 2020 global shutdown, creating her first fluid art series amid the George Floyd civil rights protests. Painting during a moment of national reckoning, she turned to abstraction as a way to process grief, anger, resilience, and hope. Her work captures the lived experience of being Black in America, often holding space for contradiction—beauty and pain, strength and vulnerability, rage and restoration. As a Black woman artist, Maria uses movement, layering, and color to explore identity, power, and liberation as both personal and communal pursuits. Maria’s work has been featured in private and corporate collections across the country and highlighted in KC Studio Magazine. She has exhibited at the InterUrban ArtHouse, Johnson County Museum, Leedy-Voulkos Art Center, Bruce R. Watkins Cultural Heritage Center, and the Zhou B Art Center in Kansas City’s historic 18th & Vine Jazz District. Through her art, Maria seeks to create spaces for dialogue, reflection, and connection—inviting viewers to consider their role in building more just, compassionate, and liberated communities.
About the Piece:
The Courage to Rise – Power Re-Imagined is a reflection of the moment when survival transforms into self-determination. This work explores the quiet, often unseen process of reclaiming one’s power—after it has been challenged, fragmented, or diminished by systems, experiences, or expectations beyond one’s control. This piece honors courage not as a singular act, but as a continuous choice: to rise, to re-imagine identity, and to move forward with purpose. It invites one to consider power not as something granted or taken, but as something internal—reclaimed through self-trust, community, and transformation. Ultimately, The Courage to Rise – Power Re-Imagined is an affirmation of becoming—of honoring the journey from fracture to flow, and the strength found in choosing oneself again and again.
