Amy Sherald

[8] On November 17, 2021, Welfare Queen (2012), sold for $3.9M in a Phillips New York auction and brought to light the need for more governance around resale royalties for artists.

[10] Her great-grandfather was a German Jewish tailor, and the family belonged to the all-white Worldwide Church of God, celebrating the Sabbath on Friday night, honoring Old Testament holidays such as Passover, and dispensing with Christmas and Easter.

[11] As a schoolchild, Sherald had an early interest in art, staying in during recess to draw[12] and often adding images to the ends of sentences, depicting whatever she was writing about—a house, a flower, a bird.

In particular, the trip to the Columbus Museum allowed her to see Object Permanence, a painting by realistic portrait artist Bo Bartlett[13] that included the image of a black man.

[12]Notwithstanding this revelatory experience, Sherald's parents wanted her career to be in medicine, and discouraged her from pursuing art.

[16] The experience made Sherald conscious of race from an early age, as well as the related social cues,[15] again informed by her mother: "'You're different from everybody else [...] You need to speak a certain way and act a certain way.'

[17] She enrolled at Clark Atlanta University, where Sherald began college on the pre-med track her parents hoped for, but as a sophomore cross-registered for a painting class at Spelman College, which introduced Sherald to Panama-born artist and art historian Arturo Lindsay, whose work focuses on the African influence on the cultures of the Americas.

[4] While attending MICA, Sherald studied with abstract expressionist painter Grace Hartigan, from whom she learned the "dripping method" of painting.

[20] Spending much of her career based in Baltimore,[21] Sherald documents contemporary African-American experience in the United States through large-scale portraits, often working from photographs of strangers she encounters on the streets.

She prepared and curated shows in the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo and the 1999 South American Biennale in Lima, Peru.

[12] Sherald uses the gray hues to challenge an idea of race where skin color automatically assigns a category,[24] part of a broader project to counter what she experienced as the limited narrative available to her growing up in segregated Columbus, Georgia, only shortly after the Civil Rights Movement.

[24] Sherald said in a round table: "When I finally came across the black-and-white photography, I realized that I was setting these people up and recreating that same kind of quietness and dignity that I saw in these photographs that Black families were having taken of them.

[4][5] The competition noted that "Sherald creates innovative, dynamic portraits that, through color and form, confront the psychological effects of stereotypical imagery on African-American subjects".

Sherald said the painting was inspired by Alice in Wonderland, noting the dress and the teacup, and said her work often “starts in a place of fantasy”, here lending itself to the possibility of “being seen as more than the color of your skin”.

"[30] Sherald's creative process began as soon as she learned she'd received the commission, looking up every image of Michelle Obama she could find on the internet.

Writing about the painting, critic Doreen St. Félix said “lack of brown skin may at first feel like a loss, but soon becomes a real gain”.

Asked about the pressure of this painting, Sherald said she was initially anxious because of the emotion invested in the Obama family globally, but realized there were millions of people she might not be able to please.

[43] Sherald's solo exhibition, titled "the heart of the matter..." took place in fall 2019 at the Hauser & Wirth gallery in New York City.

[2] Writing about the show, Erin Christovale, an associate curator at the Hammer Museum, wrote: "There's something about the grayness that doesn't mute the paintings but allows you to really think about the various skin tones and cultures and spaces that the African diaspora exists in.

"[44] Sherald's gallery, Hauser, described this effect produced by the grayscale as "requir[ing the viewer] to meet the artist's subjects actively and to "negotiate" their own conceived notions of Black American life.

With her characteristic use of grisaille and newer form of gouache, Sherald creates confident and calm black women in Womanist is to Feminist as Purple is to Lavender, an Alice Walker quote.

Sherald, who described her art classes as "a safe haven" growing up,[12] told Creative Boom: "I always want the work to be a resting place, one where you can let your guard down among figures you understand.

[47] After the 26-year-old medical worker was shot and killed by Louisville police officers in her apartment in March, her case received nationwide attention and fueled demonstrations throughout the world, along with the murders of Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd.

Sherald created this image of Taylor with her signature gray-scale skin coloring, along with a free-flowing blue dress against an aqua background.

[50] From the sale of the portrait, Sherald gave $1 million to the University of Louisville in 2022 to establish two grant programs in Breonna Taylor's name.