Amy Sherald in “Everyday Icons”

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In her studio in New Jersey, artist Amy Sherald paints portraits that tell a story about American lives. Her face just inches away from a canvas, the artist carefully applies stroke after stroke, building her narrative through paint. “I really have this belief that images can change the world,” says Sherald, a belief she acts upon in her compelling paintings, which depict everyday people with dignity and humanity. Following the tradition of American realists like Andrew Wyeth and Edward Hopper, the artist uses her paintings to tell stories about America. Searching for models, settings, and scenarios that would convey the kinds of stories she wanted to tell, Sherald began to populate the world of her paintings with everyday people in everyday situations.

There is a political dimension to much of Sherald’s work. While she acknowledges the importance of her choice to paint Black subjects, thus amending an underrepresentation of Black people in American art, the artist does not want the impact of her work to end there. This led her to paint the skin of her subjects in tones of gray, deemphasizing race in a viewer’s reading of the image. “It’s gotta be about humanity first,” says Sherald, “and then everything else has to follow.” In 2018, Sherald was selected by Barack and Michelle Obama to paint the former First Lady’s Presidential Portrait, becoming the first Black woman to do so. Depicting Obama in a moment of quiet contemplation, Sherald shows her sitting with the weight of her civic role and encompassing the fullness of her character and life outside of that role — modeling for viewers a way to do the same.

Raised in a home full of black-and-white pictures of her family, Sherald uses portraiture photography as an inspiration and a starting point, beginning each of her paintings with a photo shoot to create her reference image. In a new body of work, the artist reimagines famous American photographs. In her recreation of the V-J-Day photograph, the artist casts two Black men as the kissing pair, reflecting her desire to populate the world of art with new images that describe marginalized experiences. In 2020 Sherald was commissioned to paint a portrait of Breonna Taylor, a woman who police officers unjustly murdered in her home in Louisville, Kentucky. Speaking with Taylor’s family and collecting photographs, the artist painted a portrait of Taylor that sought to tell her life story holistically, representing her character and her dreams according to the people who knew her best. Acquired by both the Speed Museum of Art in Louisville and the National History Museum of African American History and Culture, Breonna Taylor (2020) occupies a powerful place in both Taylor’s hometown and the seat of government in the United States. At once casually unassuming and politically potent, Sherald’s portraits contribute new narratives to a shared experience as Americans.