Gee Horton is a Cincinnati-based, self-taught artist whose multidisciplinary practice uses drawing, photography, collage, film, and installation to explore portraiture, memory, and the emotional inheritance of Black life. Working primarily in charcoal and graphite, Horton produces highly detailed photorealistic images that explore Black interiority, memory, and cultural identity. His work often merges documentary observation with narrative imagination, forming visual worlds where personal memory intersects with collective history.
Horton’s practice frequently begins with photography, archival material, and lived encounters that he later translate through a meticulous drawing process rooted in patience, repetition, and close observation. These portraits often emerge within layered compositions that incorporate collage, symbolic gestures, and environmental cues that situate the subject within broader histories of place, family, and community. Through this process, Horton approaches drawing not only as a method of representation but as a form of reflection, preservation, and reclamation.
Recurring themes in Horton’s work include nostalgia, inner childhood, ancestral memory, and the fragile threshold between innocence and experience. His images often explore the emotional landscapes that shape identity across generations, reflecting on how memory, environment, and cultural inheritance inform the ways individuals come to understand themselves and the world around them.
Recent exhibitions include the Contemporary Arts Center (Cincinnati, Oh); the Cincinnati Art Museum; KMAC Contemporary Art Museum (Louisville, Ky); the Springfield Museum of Art (Springfield, Oh); Columbus Metropolitan Library (Columbus, Oh); Koik Contemporary Gallery (CDMX); Alpha Arts Alliance (Brooklyn, Ny); Mansfield Art Center (Mansfield, Oh); the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center (Cincinnati, Oh); Kennedy Heights Cultural Arts Center (Cincinnati, Oh); and The Alice F. & Harris K. Art Gallery (Cincinnati, Oh).
Public art projects and commissions include BLINK Cincinnati (Cincinnati, Oh); Orange Barrel Media (Atlanta, Ga; Detroit, Mi; Los Angeles, Ca; Oakland, Ca; Washington, Dc); and Cincinnati City Hall (Cincinnati, Oh), where Horton created the widely recognized Black Lives Matter mural. His work has also appeared in the Amazon Prime television series Harlem.
Horton is the recipient of the 2025 Ohio Arts Council Juror’s Choice Award, the 2025 Rosa F. and Samuel B. Sachs Fund Prize, an Emmy Award, and the 2021 ArtsWave Truth and Reconciliation Grant, and has received additional recognition from Creative Ohio, the CODA Summit Awards, and the Over-the-Rhine International Film Festival.
Born in Louisville, Kentucky, Horton is the founder of the Gee Horton Studio Gallery in Cincinnati’s historic Over-the-Rhine neighborhood.
He lives and works in Cincinnati, Ohio.
