Amy Sherald (born August 30, 1973) is an American painter based in Baltimore, Maryland.

She is best known for her portrait paintings. Her choices of subjects look to enlarge the genre of American art historical realism by telling African-American stories within their own tradition.

Education

She received a B.A. degree in painting in 1997 Clark Atlanta University. After an apprenticeship to Dr. Arturo Lindsay, Art History professor at Spelman College, she attended the Maryland Institute College of Art, receiving an M.F.A. degree in painting in 2004. She followed up her studies with painter Odd Nerdrum in Larvik, Norway.

Career

A cornerstone of Sherald’s paintings has been race and identity in the American South. Her experience of being one of very few black students to attend a private school was an early influence. She began with bald self-portraits and then moved into more fantastical work that explored the idea of circus, and fantasy. By 2016 the prize from the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition by the National Portrait Gallery revealed her figurative painting as having evolved into what the New York Times described as “a stylized realism.”. In 2018 she received the David C. Driskell prize from the High Museum of Art located in Atlanta, Georgia.

First Lady Portrait

On February 12, 2018 the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery unveiled Sherald’s portrait of Michelle Obama making her the first African-American woman to paint an official First Lady portrait. During a double portrait unveiling ceremony attended by both Obamas she and Kehinde Wiley were revealed not only as the first black artists to make official presidential portraits at the National Portrait Gallery but also as artists who each early on prioritized African-American portraiture. Holland Cotter noted in a review that they both blend fact and fiction in their portraiture.

African-American Culture

Drawing loosely upon the American Realist tradition, Sherald subverts the medium of portraiture to tease out unexpected narratives, welcoming viewers into a more complex debate about accepted notions of race and representation, and situating black heritage centrally in the story of American art. While her subjects are always African-American, Sherald renders their skin-tone exclusively in grisaille – an absence of color that directly challenges perceptions of black identity and seeks, in the artist’s words, ‘to exclude the idea of color as race.’ In compositions that are carefully controlled and meticulously considered, Sherald sets her subjects free.

In a publication by Hauser&Wirth who represents her internationally, Sherald describes the directness of a subject’s gaze as being relieved of the sense of having to perform for white people. “When you walk into the painting, you’re walking into their space. The gaze is different. I think about when my parents grew up, in the Deep South, in the 30s and 40s, and that they were really lucky not to get lynched, my father in particular. I’ve always read about lynching and the reasons why men in particular were lynched, sometimes for just looking at a white woman, in passing, just an incidental look or a perceived look. So for me the idea of the gaze is really powerful. I don’t take it for granted.”

Baltimore

Based in Baltimore MD, Amy Sherald documents contemporary African-American experience in the United States through arresting, otherworldly portraits, often working from photographs of strangers she encounters on the streets.

Personal life

In 1997 she participated in Spelman College International Artist-in-Residence program in Portobelo, Panama. She prepared and curated shows in the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo and the 1999 South American Biennale in Lima, Peru. She has taught art in the Baltimore City Detention Center. and in 2008 she did a residency the Tong Xion Art Center in Beijing, China.

Sherald was diagnosed at the age of 31 with congestive heart failure. She was the recipient of a heart transplant in December 18, 2012 at the age of 39.

Exhibitions

• 2011: The Magical Realism of Amy Sherald, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Sonja Haynes Stone Center, Chapel Hill, North Carolina
• 2013 Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African-American History & Culture, Baltimore, Maryland
• 2016 The Outwin 2016: American Portraiture Today, National Portrait Gallery, Washington D.C.
• 2017 Fictions, Studio Museum of Harlem, New York, NY
• 2018 Amy Sherald, Contemporary Art Museum Saint Louis, Saint Louis, Missouri
• 2018 Amy Sherald, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas
• 2019 Amy Sherald, Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Atlanta, Georgia

Public collections

• Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery Washington, D.C.
• Nasher Museum of Art, Durham, North Carolina
• Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington D.C.
• The National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C
• Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri
• Embassy of the United States, Dakar, Senegal
• The Columbus Museum, Columbus, Georgia
• FTI Technologies Inc., Baltimore, Maryland