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Amy Sherald
Photo of Sherald wearing a dress
Sherald in 2021
Born (1973-08-30) August 30, 1973 (age 51)
Columbus, Georgia, U.S.
Alma mater
Known for Official Portrait of First Lady Michelle Obama
The Bathers
Portrait of Breonna Taylor
Awards Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition
2016

Amy Sherald (born August 30, 1973) is an American painter. She is known for her portraits of African Americans in everyday life. Her paintings often look like staged photographs. Since 2012, she has used gray tones for skin colors. She says this helps people think differently about skin color and race.

In 2016, Amy Sherald made history. She was the first woman and first African American to win the National Portrait Gallery's Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition. Her winning painting was called Miss Everything (Unsuppressed Deliverance). The next year, she and Kehinde Wiley were chosen to paint official portraits for former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama. This was a big deal because they were the first African Americans to get these important jobs from the National Portrait Gallery. Their portraits were shown in 2018. They made many more people visit the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C..

In December 2020, her painting The Bathers (2015) sold for over $4.2 million. This was much more than expected! Another painting, Welfare Queen (2012), sold for $3.9 million in November 2021. These sales showed how important it is for artists to get paid when their art is sold again.

Early Life

Amy Sherald was born on August 30, 1973, in Columbus, Georgia. Her parents were Amos P. Sherald III and Geraldine W. Sherald. Her family belonged to a church that celebrated the Sabbath on Friday night. They also honored Old Testament holidays like Passover.

As a child, Amy loved art. She would stay inside during recess to draw. She often added pictures to her sentences. Even with this interest, she was surprised to learn art could be a job. This happened on her first museum trip to the Columbus Museum. There, she saw a painting by Bo Bartlett called Object Permanence. It showed a black man. Seeing her own world in a museum made a big impact on her. She realized art was real and made by living people.

Amy's parents wanted her to become a doctor. They did not want her to be an artist. But Amy said her mother's opposition made her even more determined. She felt her mother, who grew up in 1930s Alabama, taught her to be strong.

Growing up in a mostly white area, Amy was often one of the few African American students. Her light hair and skin made things more complex. This made her aware of race from a young age. Her mother told her she was "different" and needed to "speak a certain way and act a certain way." Looking back, Amy felt that black life in the South was often shown in a very limited way. She wanted her paintings to create new, different stories about African American life.

Education

Amy Sherald went to St. Anne-Pacelli Catholic School. She started college at Clark Atlanta University to study medicine, as her parents wished. But in her second year, she took a painting class at Spelman College. There, she met artist Arturo Lindsay. He taught her about African influences in American cultures. Amy earned her B.A. degree in painting from Clark Atlanta University in 1997.

After college, she worked for free with Lindsay for five years. Then, she went to the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore. She earned her M.F.A. degree in painting in 2004. At MICA, she learned from painter Grace Hartigan. She also convinced Odd Nerdrum to teach her in Norway. In 2021, MICA gave her an honorary doctorate degree.

Career

Early Art Career

Amy Sherald lived in Baltimore for much of her early career. She paints large portraits that show the lives of modern African Americans in the United States. She often uses photos of people she meets on the street as her models. This is similar to how artist Barkley L. Hendricks worked.

Amy was very driven to be an artist. She worked as a waitress until she was 38 years old to support herself.

In 1997, she took part in an artist program in Portobelo, Panama. She also helped prepare art shows in Peru. She taught art at the Baltimore City Detention Center. In 2008, she worked at an art center in Beijing, China.

Since 2008, Amy has painted over 30 artworks. Since her 2012 painting Equilibrium, she has painted the skin tones of her Black subjects in gray. She uses gray to challenge ideas about race and skin color. This helps her tell new stories about African American life. She grew up in Columbus, Georgia, shortly after the Civil Rights Movement, where stories about Black people were often limited.

Her choice of gray tones also reminds people of old black-and-white photos. For example, W.E.B. DuBois took black and white photos of Black people for the 1900 Paris Exposition. These photos showed Black people with dignity. Amy said she saw her own work in these old photographs.

Art critics say her style makes viewers think about the inner lives of the people in her paintings. Amy feels her work is possible because earlier artists explained Blackness to others. Now, she and other artists can explore themselves more deeply. They can focus on the complex inner lives of people. This helps them "escape that public black identity."

Amy usually finds her subjects by meeting people in her daily life. She invites them for a photo session. Then, she paints from those photos.

Winning the Outwin Boochever Prize

Amy Sherald became well-known in 2016. Her painting, Miss Everything (Unsuppressed Deliverance), won the National Portrait Gallery's Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition. She also won a $25,000 award. The competition praised her for creating "innovative, dynamic portraits." They said her use of color and form challenged stereotypes about African Americans. She was the first woman and first African American to win this competition. Miss Everything was chosen from 2,500 other entries.

For this painting, Amy took many photos of her model. The model relaxed into the pose after about an hour. Amy said the painting was inspired by Alice in Wonderland. She pointed out the dress and teacup. She said her art often starts with fantasy. This helps people see her subjects as more than just their skin color.

Painting the First Lady's Portrait

Main article: First Lady Michelle Obama (painting)

In 2017, First Lady Michelle Obama chose Amy Sherald to paint her official portrait. This portrait would hang in the National Portrait Gallery. Michelle Obama said she felt an instant connection with Amy. She was amazed by Amy's bold colors and unique subjects. She also liked Amy's personality.

Amy started working on the portrait right away. She looked at every picture of Michelle Obama she could find online. This was a new challenge for Amy. She had never taken a specific commission before. But her goal was the same: to show a more "private and intimate" side of Obama. She wanted to avoid showing Obama's "public entity."

Amy held photo sessions in Washington, D.C. She worked with Obama's stylist to choose a dress. They picked a simple, sleeveless maxi dress by Michelle Smith for Milly. Amy felt the dress connected to the history of black quilting, like the Gee's Bend quilts. Some art critics noticed that parts of the portrait were influenced by Gustav Klimt, especially his Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I.

National Portrait Gallery visitors view First Lady Michelle Obama
Visitors viewing First Lady Michelle Obama at the National Portrait Gallery.

The portraits of Michelle Obama by Amy Sherald and Barack Obama by Kehinde Wiley were shown in 2018. They were the first official presidential portraits by African-American artists at the National Portrait Gallery. Both artists focused on African-American portraits early in their careers. Art critic Holland Cotter noted that both artists mix facts and imagination in their work. The portraits brought many visitors to the National Portrait Gallery.

Some people criticized the painting. They thought it was less formal than expected. Some asked, "Why is she gray? It doesn't look like her." Amy replied that some people like their art to be different. She used her signature gray tones for Obama's skin. She wanted viewers to see Obama as a whole person, not just by her race. Critic Doreen St. Félix wrote that the lack of brown skin might seem like a loss at first. But it helps viewers connect with Obama as a woman, no matter their own background. The portrait shows how people could relate to the former First Lady.

Amy said she was nervous about painting such an important person. But she realized she couldn't please everyone. In the end, she was happy that Michelle Obama loved the painting.

Recent Work

Since winning the Boochever prize and painting the Obama portrait, Amy Sherald has become very famous. In 2018, she had her first solo museum show in St. Louis. She also got a mural project in Philadelphia. That same year, a large mural version of her painting Equilibrium was put on the Parkway Theatre in Baltimore. The original painting is in the U.S. Embassy in Dakar, Senegal.

Amy lived in Baltimore for 13 years. In 2018, she moved to New Jersey. She now works from a studio in Jersey City.

In 2018, Amy Sherald won the David C. Driskell Prize from the High Museum of Art.

Her solo art show called "the heart of the matter..." opened in fall 2019. It was at the Hauser & Wirth gallery in New York City. The show featured eight large oil portraits. Erin Christovale, an art curator, wrote that the gray tones in the paintings don't make them dull. Instead, they make you think about the many skin tones and cultures of the African diaspora. Amy's gallery said the gray tones make viewers actively think about their own ideas of Black American life.

Amy also had an exhibition in 2020 with five small portraits of black women. She created these during the COVID-19 pandemic. She used her gray-scale style and a new type of paint called gouache. The paintings show confident and calm black women. The show's title, Womanist is to Feminist as Purple is to Lavender, is a quote from Alice Walker. These paintings show black women enjoying relaxing activities. One painting has a woman lying in an orange chair. Another shows a barefoot woman on her bicycle. Amy focuses on everyday activities but with a more relaxed feeling. She said art classes were a "safe haven" for her growing up. She wants her art to be a "resting place" where people can feel comfortable.

Amy's first big solo show on the West Coast opened in March 2021. It was called "The Great American Fact." It showed five new paintings from 2020. These paintings use Amy's special style to show Black Americans in peaceful, quiet scenes.

Breonna Taylor Portrait

In 2020, Amy Sherald painted Breonna Taylor's portrait for the September cover of Vanity Fair. Breonna Taylor was a 26-year-old medical worker. She was shot and killed by police in her apartment in March 2020. Her case brought a lot of attention and led to protests around the world. This happened along with the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd.

Amy painted Taylor with her signature gray-scale skin. She wore a flowing blue dress against an aqua background. Amy told Vanity Fair that Taylor "sees you seeing her." She said Taylor's pose and gaze are strong. Amy wanted the painting to inspire people to keep fighting for justice for Breonna. She felt the blue dress reminded her of Lady Justice.

The painting was bought by the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., and the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, KY. It was part of an exhibit honoring Breonna Taylor's life in 2021.

In 2022, Amy Sherald gave $1 million from the sale of the portrait to the University of Louisville. This money created two grant programs in Breonna Taylor's name.

Personal Life

Amy Sherald's father died in 2000. Her aunt also got a brain infection around that time. Later, her brother died from lung cancer.

When she was 30, Amy was diagnosed with congestive heart failure. This happened during a normal checkup while she was training for a triathlon. Her doctor told her that her heart was only working at 5%. She stayed in the hospital for two months. She received a heart transplant on December 18, 2012, when she was 39. Before her transplant, Amy's art career was also paused because she had to care for a sick family member.

After living in Baltimore for 13 years, Amy moved to New Jersey in 2018.

Political Activism

Before the 2024 United States presidential election, Amy Sherald was one of 165 artists who helped Kamala Harris's campaign. She contributed art to an online sale. All the money raised went directly to Harris's campaign.

Exhibitions

Public Collections

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