We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Morgan Davis. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Morgan below.

Morgan, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

It’s incredibly difficult to pick one project, but I would say one of the most meaningful projects I’ve been apart of was the first short film I ever did makeup for. For context, before this project I only did makeup for fun and almost exclusively on myself. I had been painting my face in all sorts of crazy ways since I was ten, but for some reason I was really shy about it. Most of my work was left unseen, except for a few looks I had finally worked up the courage to post on Instagram. That changed when I got a DM from an actor friend I made while working in a Haunted House together about a year prior. She explained to me that she was writing and directing a short ghost story (The Ghost of Barbara Allen) and she wanted me to be the head of makeup and costuming! I had never been given that kind of responsibility over a project before, and there was an actual budget! Nothing fancy, but certainly more of a budget than I had ever had! Needless to say, I had no idea what I was doing, but I said yes anyway!

Leading up to the project, I was really doubting my ability to pull it off. I was used to doing makeup on myself in my room at 3am with hours to kill, not on a movie set with actual deadlines! But the director really helped put my mind at ease. She trusted me and essentially gave me free reign to bring our collective vision to life. I got to design the ghost character from head to toe and come up with some very creative ways to achieve some pretty gnarly special effects (blood and guts and gore, oh my!) Once filming started, most of my doubts and fears melted away. Up until that point, I was usually the one in front of the camera. I was surprised to find how much I enjoyed being behind it for once. I held my breath each time an effect was supposed to take place. I recall a specific scene where the ghost character was supposed to rip another character’s stomach open, but the blood bag just didn’t cooperate. My heart dropped! Luckily, I was able to pivot and make it work, but that was certainly not the only effect that didn’t go according to plan. If I learned one thing on this project, it was to be flexible! After only four days of filming through rain, shine, and an annoyingly loud music festival in prospect park, we wrapped! Then it was time for the waiting to begin…

I thought I was done, just happy to have that experience and get back to my normal life, but suddenly my name started being passed around and I was working on a new project just two months later! Now I have been working professionally as a makeup artist for a little over a year! Just goes to show, you never know exactly where an opportunity will take you! If it weren’t for this project and a director who trusted me, I likely never would have taken myself seriously enough to seek it out on my own. I am eternally grateful for the way this opportunity changed my life!

Morgan, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am a makeup artist and actor based out of NYC! Growing up in a small town in Michigan, I always needed to be making something. I took every art class they let me take throughout school, participated in any theatre/performance opportunity I could find, and always took my halloween costume/makeup a little too seriously. I moved to the city in 2020 to study Musical Theatre at The American Musical and Dramatic Academy. I completed their conservatory program in 2022 and have been here ever since! I started seriously pursuing my makeup career a little over a year ago and recently graduated from the Makeup Academy of NYC, completing 100 hours of training! Starting as an artsy kid in a small town with too many creative hobbies to count, I never thought it would lead me to where I am now!

I provide a wide variety of makeup services, specializing in special fx, editorial, and theatrical/drag– but I can give you a killer smokey eye too! I really enjoy working with my clients to tailor the experience to their specific needs. If I’m doing a glam client, I want them to still feel like themselves when they look in the mirror! On the other hand, if I’m doing a drag/SFX client, I want them to be unrecognizable if they so choose! It’s all up to the result we are trying to achieve, and I love doing the “problem solving” to get there!

I think I am most proud of my adaptability as an artist. My path has not been linear by any means, but I am so glad I have taken the opportunities I have been given and I can’t wait to see where else life will take me. Every job I have taken on has taught me something valuable, whether it be acting, makeup, or side gig, and I think that has resulted in me becoming a very versatile artist. I come from a very “Do It Yourself” kind of household, and that has given me a real drive to always stay learning! For that, I thank my parents. No matter if I am performing or doing makeup, it’s important to me to keep making the art I want to make!

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

We should start by recognizing how much of an impact artists have on our society! Not just the music you listen to, the movies you watch, and the theatre you see, but also the advertisements you walk by on the subway, every app icon on the homepage of your phone, even the architecture for the building you’re in right now! It’s easy to get distracted by the top 1% of every creative field when they are making millions of dollars off of one movie or painting, but most artists are “normal” working class people who are likely being underpaid or undervalued for their work. Most of the world we live in now wouldn’t exist without artists and creatives, so it is important not to take that for granted. That doesn’t mean people should go out of their way to purchase art/creative services if they don’t have the means or interest to do so, but it’s helpful to refrain from telling someone to lower the price of their work/services because they don’t see the value in their pricing. There are so many things working against creatives right now, between AI and many of our industries still to this day trying to recover from the pandemic, we could all do better to have more empathy for each other.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

I love the community that comes with being an artist! Meeting new people, bouncing ideas off of each other, inspiring one another! It feels so human getting to collaborate with others to make something out of nothing. There’s nothing quite like the feeling of ownership you have seeing your finished project in front of you and getting to celebrate it with the people that made it possible! I have met so many incredible people throughout my career, and I wouldn’t trade them for the world!

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @morgandavis_mua & @mdavissings

Image Credits

Wade Bryant
Marcus Maddox
Tamanna Khurana
Maya Sturmer