This spring, Amy Sherald presents “American Sublime” at The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. The exhibition, curated by Rujeko Hockley, brings together work over the past nearly two decades, contextualizing the artist’s place within this history of American portraiture.
On view are portraits that celebrate the beauty, impact, and resilience of everyday Black Americans. Sherald’s practice is traced from the mid-2000s to today, including her now iconic portrait of First Lady Michelle Obama. She builds archetypes and mythologies around her subjects, rendered with careful attention to their posture, poise, stare, and choice of clothing. Recent paintings like American Grit and Trans Forming Liberty act as love letters to broader communities, an act that is central to Sherald’s practice. Whitewall spoke with Sherald about the exhibition on the eve of the Met Gala—her first—where she was dressed by Fear of God’s Jerry Lorenzo. As fashion choices play a central role in her portraits, it was only fitting that we discussed the intersection of art, culture, and clothes.
Amy Sherald, courtesy of Fear of God.
Amy Sherald, “If You Surrendered to the Air, You Could Ride It,” 2019. Oil on linen, 130 × 108 × 2 1/2 in. (330.2 × 274.3 × 6.4 cm. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase with funds from the Painting and Sculpture Committee, Sascha S. Bauer, Jack Cayre, Nancy Carrington Crown, Nancy Poses, Laura Rapp, and Elizabeth Redleaf 2020.148. © Amy Sherald. Photograph by Joseph Hyde.
WHITEWALL: Is this your first time attending the Met Gala?
AMY SHERALD: It is my first time and it’s been a whirlwind, but in the most joyful way. It’s a unique convergence of art, fashion, and culture. It’s all the things I care deeply about. There’s a kind of energetic charge that comes with preparing for it.
Amy Sherald Dressed by Fear of God at The Met Gala
WW: How did you connect with Fear of God and Jerry Lorenzo?
AS: They reached out to me. I think we share a same kind of sensibility, the way Jerry merges form and feeling and minimalism and power. I think there’s an energy that he wants to project, and I see fashion in the same way. As I see my paintings, actually. It’s about self-presentation and storytelling. I’m wearing a look that feels like an extension of that. I feel very powerful in this suit. It’s like nothing I’ve ever worn before.
“I feel very powerful in this suit. It’s like nothing I’ve ever worn before,”
Amy Sherald
WW: Is it a suit something you’d typically wear?
AS: I run the spectrum. It depends on whether I want to lean into my masculine energy or my feminine energy. I can be frilly, ruffly, poofy, or I could wear a suit. It’s all about the mood.
Fashion speaks to how I want to feel and who I want to be when I walk into whatever room I’m walking into. I don’t have one specific style, but I think now, as I get older, I dress for comfort, and I really love that. Jerry makes clothes that are athleisure, but you can throw an overcoat over it, pull on a pair of heels, and just look amazing.
WW: And are you looking forward to seeing the exhibition, “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style,” as well?
AS: Absolutely. I’m looking forward to witnessing a visual celebration of black expression through clothing, and the care and the precision that goes into that. My grandfather was a tailor in Clarksdale, Mississippi. And, for him, everything was about fabric and fit. I’m really excited to see the exhibition and, figuratively speaking, trace those threads.
“Fashion speaks to how I want to feel and who I want to be,”
Amy Sherald
WW: Fashion plays a big role in your paintings, as well. The clothing we see on your subjects has been curated and carefully selected. What is your process when it comes to featuring fashion in your portraiture?
AS: In my work, fashion operates as a form of self-authorship. The way that my subjects dress, the way that I dress my subjects, or color palettes or silhouettes, it becomes a part of their inner narrative.
And historically in portraiture, clothing denoted class, power, virtue. So in a way, I’m reclaiming that visual language. I reframe it to tell a quieter, more intimate truth about Black life and focus on the interiority of my sitters. The garments help to construct those mythologies.
Amy Sherald’s “American Sublime” at The Whitney
Amy Sherald, “Mother and Child,” 2016 Oil on canvas, 54 × 43 × 2 1/2 in. (137.16 × 109.22 × 6.35 cm). Courtesy The Blanchard Nesbitt Family. © Amy Sherald. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photograph by Joseph Hyde.
Amy Sherald, “As American as Apple Pie,” 2020. Oil on canvas,123 × 101 × 2 1/2 in. (312.4 × 256.5 × 6.4 cm). Courtesy that artist and Hauser and Wirth. © Amy Sherald. Photograph by Joseph Hyde.
WW: Your exhibition, “American Sublime,” is up at the Whitney. What has it been like to see this come together and open to the public, and see visitors engage with your work from over the past several years?
AS: It’s been deeply emotional to bring together a decade of work or more. It’s my life’s work. And to witness the evolution of my own voice on the walls of the museum. It’s been humbling, it’s been surreal. I work in solitude for so long and then…the paintings are mine and now they belong to the world in a different way. So I’ve been moved by the way that people have engaged with the work and how it sparks conversation and memory, and even silence.
“It’s been deeply emotional to bring together a decade of work or more really. It’s my life’s work,”
Amy Sherald
WW: What was it like to work with Rujeko Hockley to select the paintings that would be on view?
AS: It begins with her curatorial vision. Rujeko is a brilliant thinker and she’s an intentional listener. Curating with her felt like an act of trust. She understands the emotional architecture of the paintings and the stakes. We weren’t solely working on selecting works for their aesthetic strength, but really like curating a lineage of becoming—seeing how far you’ve come and looking at your work from 20 years ago. It’s a journey. It shows the process. It shows how my process evolved. And I’m really proud of that.
WW: Were there moments where you were like, a painting anew, whether it was revisiting it for the first time in a long time, or seeing it in the actual space with your other work?
AS: A little bit of that, yes. A little bit of seeing it anew. I separate the works emotionally based on where I was when I was painting them, because each studio I had meant that I was taking a step forward.
There are the ones that I made in my $300 a month studio, where I didn’t have air conditioning, and I didn’t have heat. And then there are the other ones that were in a different building called the Copycat building. And those where I was making a little more money in a little nicer studio. Where was I in my life at that time on the journey to become an artist that exhibits at the Whitney, which is still mind-blowing.
Painting America as Promise and Paradox
Amy Sherald, “A God Blessed Land (Empire of Dirt),” 2022. Oil on linen, 96 1/8 × 130 1/8 × 2 1/2 in. (244.1 × 330.2 × 6.35 cm.) Courtesy the Tymure Collection. © Amy Sherald. Photograph by Joseph Hyde.
WW: And totally warranted! I wanted to ask you about some of the recent paintings we see, which felt mind-blowing to stand in front of. A God Blessed Land is so vivid and almost hyper-real real but also almost dreamlike.
AS: It’s a meditation on place. The idea of America as both promise and paradox. His posture is proud, the gaze is layered in the sense of holding a lot of complexity. It’s holding pain. It’s holding possibility. And all of that within one frame. This particular person is a friend of mine. And I worked on his farm, and farming is his ministry, if you will. It’s a historical painting in the sense of like it’s a land painting. And a painting of a farmer, to make those little nods to art history with my own insertion.
“It’s a meditation on place. The idea of America as both promise and paradox,”
Amy Sherald.
Amy Sherald, “Trans Forming Liberty,” 2024. Oil on linen, 123 × 76 1/2 × 2 1/2in. (312.4 × 194.3 × 6.35 cm). Courtesy the artist and Hauser and Wirth. © Amy Sherald. Photograph by Kevin Bulluck.
Amy Sherald, “Planes, Rockets, and the Spaces in Between,” 2018. Oil on canvas, 100 x 67 x 2 1/2 in. (254 x 170.1 x 6.35 cm). Baltimore Museum of Art, Purchase with exchange funds from the Pearlstone Family Fund and partial gift of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc., BMA 2018.80. © Amy Sherald. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photograph by Joseph Hyde.
WW: And then the painting, Trans Forming Liberty. What was the starting point for that work?
AS: It’s my attempt to imagine liberation beyond the binaries that we’ve been given. And then to show love to the people in my life that are trans and whose bodies are being policed just because they want to become who they are. It’s about self-invention and about reimagining freedom as a deeply personal act.
WW: It feels like a love letter, almost, to the trans community.
AS: Yeah, it is definitely a love letter.
WW: And American Grit is so powerful. I’d love to hear about the making of that piece, and the choice of color is so distinct.
AS: For some reason, that one felt urgent to paint and I’m not sure why. It’s about endurance, it’s about what it means to live with dignity when the world doesn’t always see your worth. I feel like this subject carries the history of so many ancestors who pushed forward despite everything. It’s quiet. It carries a weight of resilience. I say that all my portraits are archetypes, but I feel like this one really sits deeply in that word.
Making Paintings for Everybody, and For Me
Amy Sherald, “Ecclesia (The Meeting of Inheritance and Horizons),” 2024 Oil on linen, three panels 128 x 68 x 2.5in Collection of the artist; courtesy Hauser and Wirth.
WW: And Ecclesia is wild. It’s incredible.
AS: I painted that one for me. That one was definitely just for me. I mean, it’s for everybody, but I just wanted to play.
WW: It feels that way. When you mentioned mythology earlier, I thought of that work.
AS: It could be about like a spiritual inheritance, belief systems passed down through family and ritual. But I really didn’t want to have any answers. I just want people to sit and wonder, like, what is happening? Who are they? Where are they? Are they in the sky? Are they over water? Are they over land? What is she peering out at? Who are they beckoning?
I did that one for my inner child. That’s what I’ve been saying.
WW: Do you often paint for yourself, do you think, or was this like a moment where you felt a need to?
AS: I felt a need. I mean, a lot of the work is about inclusivity, which is why I painted American Grit. Everyone should feel represented, to see themselves represented. I think it’s important, especially considering the title, “American Sublime,” and that it extends to excellence and grandeur. I wanted to expand the conversation.
So sometimes I paint for other people, but I feel like that one specifically I painted it for myself.
The Impact of Amy Sherald’s Michelle Obama Portrait
WW: I wanted to ask you what it’s like to be an artist who is known well beyond the art world. So many people connect with you personally as a result of your breathtaking portrait of First Lady Michelle Obama. What is that like as an artist, and really just as a person in this world?
AS: It’s astonishing still, honestly. It feels…It feels warm. It feels tender. It makes me feel tender. And then also just very vulnerable at the same time. It’s affirming. To see how Mrs. Obama’s portrait resonated across communities and how people saw themselves in it. It was a reminder of what art can do. Because it wasn’t just about representation, it was about affirmation. And it opened doors, not just for me, but for what’s possible in American portraiture.
“It was a reminder of what art can do. Because it wasn’t just about representation, it was about affirmation,”
Amy Sherald
Amy Sherald, “American Grit,” 2024. Oil on linen, 95 × 76 1/2 × 2 1/2 in. (241.3 × 194.3 × 6.35 cm). Courtesy the artist and Hauser and Wirth. © Amy Sherald. Photograph by Kevin Bulluck.
Amy Sherald, “Hangman,” 2007. Oil on canvas, 100 × 67 × 2 1/2 in. (254 × 170.18 × 6.35 cm). Collection of Sheryll Cashin and Marque Chambliss. © Amy Sherald. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photograph by Kelvin Bulluck.
WW: Thinking of your work within the context of American portraiture, who were the artists or artworks that left an early impression on you?
AS: My main inspirations came from film and photography. And, you know, I studied with Odd Nerdrum inNorway—he’s like a modern day Rembrandt. I learned how to see from him. I also learned how to project energy into the work so that it comes alive.
He showed us two landscape paintings side by side. They were by two different artists, both rendered to the same level. But one of them had an energy to it, and the other one didn’t. It was shocking to see the difference, but there is a difference. From that moment, I approached my work in that way. I can’t say that there’s a way that I could explain how it’s done, but I think it’s choosing the right subjects and then the energy of the artist meeting that energy of the person and creating something that holds an emotional charge.
In the Studio with Amy Sherald
Amy Sherald, “A Midsummer Afternoon Dream,” 2021. Oil on canvas, 106 × 101 × 2 1/2 in. (269.24 × 256.54 × 6.35cm). Private Collection. © Amy Sherald. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photograph by Joseph Hyde.
Amy Sherald, “They Call Me Redbone, but I’d Rather Be Strawberry Shortcake,” 2009. Oil on canvas, 54 × 43 × 2 1/2 in. (137.16 × 109.22 × 6.35 cm). National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC, gift of Steven Scott, Baltimore, in honor of the artist and the 25th anniversary of National Museum of Women in the Arts. © Amy Sherald. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photograph by Ryan Stevenson.
WW: What is it like to work on a show like this and then come back to the studio?
AS: Years ago, I took the advice of my friend Titus Kaphar, who said he always leaves one or two paintings unfinished in his studio so that he’s not coming back to an empty space. It’s hard to get started when the space is empty. So I’m working on just a couple of pieces. In the meantime, I’m planning some travel to look at some art and just be out in the world because you’re not creative or can’t make work in a vacuum. The output has to be balanced by the input. For me, it’s good to take breaks. Usually, if I worked for a year and a half or two years, then I might want to take six or seven months off where I’m just out in the world, looking, seeing, feeling so that I have things to pull from when I’m in the studio.
“Your unproductive moments are just as important as when you’re producing,”
Amy Sherald
WW: That’s part of the process in the work too, right?
AS: I do have to remind myself of that, because it does feel counterproductive. It feels frivolous, but it’s not at all. Because the work that I’ve put in this show at the Whitney covers over two decades would have never happened had I not had to move back home to Columbus, Georgia, and taken care of my family for four years. That made me realize that your unproductive moments are just as important as when you’re producing.
