Amy Sherald, American born 1973
from a mid-career exhibition at the Whitney Museum of (North) American Art, NY in 2025
Amy Sherald creates portraits of ‘ordinary’ African Americans going about their ‘ordinary’ business.
She is among a small group of artists who has been able to include in the images hung in museums and galleries those of African-Americans.
Some of her sharp-edged, colourful portraits are styled with North American archetypal signifiers: the white wooden picket fence; tall ships; the Statue of Liberty. These have not historically been associated with African Americans.
Some of her early portraits incorporate her interests in the fantastic, in film, circus, and magical realism.
No matter the styling, these portraits are of real people.
Moral beauty is the attribute of people’s meaning and being and acting where the most generous imagination is in full play and its discrimination has nothing in it of fear or scorn or greed or malevolence.
In these raucous times of political chaos, corruption and cruelty, these portraits stand as a pointer to the workings of moral beauty, and also of striving and grace in the lives of ‘ordinary’ people painted by an extraordinay artist.
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Amy Sherald’s route to painting was circuitous: from an early schooling in medical studies to fortuitous experiences with artist-teachers and art communities in Panama, the US and Europe.
Hangman, 2007, oil on canvas
Amy Sherald, American born 1973. Private loan to the Whitney Museum, NY in 2025
Interested in figuration, she came to her style by experimentation.
In order to make her portraits, she uses photo shoots with her subjects or with models. She uses props and clothing which she selects. These photographs guide her painting.
Well-Prepared and Maladjusted, 2008, oil on canvas
Amy Sherald, American born 1973. Private loan to the Whitney Museum, NY in 2025
This way, she has said: “…we (Black Americans) could pose ourselves and we could represent ourselves, and we could show up in these images the way we wanted to be seen.”
They Call Me Redbone, but I’d Rather Be Strawberry, 2009, oil on canvas
Amy Sherald, American born 1973. National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC loan to the Whitney Museum, NY in 2025
The Rabbit in the Hat, 2009, oil on canvas
Amy Sherald, American born 1973. Private loan to the Whitney Museum, NY in 2025
Since 2007, the earliest of the paintings shown here, Amy Sherald has painted the skin of her subjects in grayscale (grisaille) rather than in naturalistic brown tones. She wants to divert the viewer’s interest in race to the characteristics and interiority of her subjects.
It Made Sense….Mostly in Her Mind, 2011, oil on canvas
Amy Sherald, American born 1973. Private loan to the Whitney Museum, NY in 2025
Freeing herself was one thing, taking ownership of that freed self was another, 2013, oil on canvas
Amy Sherald, American born 1973. Private loan to the Whitney Museum, NY in 2025
Saint Woman, 2015, oil on canvas
Amy Sherald, American born 1973. Private loan to the Whitney Museum, NY in 2025
A gallery in the exhibition
In all her paintings, the artist uses the figure’s facial expression, especially the gaze, to emphasize the agency of each subject.
Title TBD
Amy Sherald, American born 1973. Exhibited at the Whitney Museum, NY in 2025
This agency was long denied to minority populations in the US.
We are in a political environnment in which attempts, begun years ago, have been successfully concluded by conservatives on the US Supreme Court, and in the executive and legislative branches of the Federal and certain state governments, to fragment this agency into political disadvantage for minorities.
The Boy with No Past, oil on canvas, 2014
Amy Sherald, American born 1973. Private loan to the Whitney Museum, NY in 2025
Amy Sherald has said: “My portraits are quiet, but they’re not passive. When you consider the African American historical narrative and its ties to the gaze, a glance could result in punishment by lynching.
“I wanted my sitters to look out and meet your gaze, instead of being gazed upon. Essentially, that’s the beginning of selfhood, a consideration of self which is not reactionary to your environment.”
Miss Everything (Unsuppressed Deliverance), 2014, oil on canvas
Amy Sherald, American born 1973. Private loan to the Whitney Museum, NY in 2025
The Bathers, 2015, oil on canvas
Amy Sherald, American born 1973. Private loan to the Whitney Museum, NY in 2025
Mother and Child, oil on canvas, 2016
Amy Sherald, American born 1973. Private loan to the Whitney Museum, NY in 2025
All Things Bright and Beautiful, 2016, oil on canvas
Amy Sherald, American born 1973. Private loan to the Whitney Museum, NY in 2025
Portraits are hung low on the walls.
Listen, you a wonder. You a city of a woman. You got a geography of your own, 2016, oil on canvas
Amy Sherald, American born 1973. Private loan to the Whitney Museum, NY in 2025
What the Mirror Said
Lucille Clifton, 1936-2010, American
listen,
you a wonder.
you a city
of a woman.
you got a geography
of your own.
listen,
somebody need a map
to understand you.
somebody need directions
to move around you.
listen,
woman,
you not a noplace
anonymous
girl;
mister with his hands on you
he got his hands on
some
damn
body!
A Golden Afternoon, 2016, oil on canvas
Amy Sherald, American born 1973. Private loan to the Whitney Museum, NY in 2025
What’s Different about Alice is that she has the most incisive way of telling the truth, 2017
Amy Sherald, American born 1973. Loan from the Columbus Museum to the Whitney Museum, NY in 2025
What’s precious inside of him does not care to be known by the mind in ways that diminish its presence (All American), 2017, oil on canvas
Amy Sherald, American born 1973. Private loan to the Whitney Museum, NY in 2025
Try on dreams until I find one that fits me. They all fit me, 2017.
Amy Sherald, American born 1973. Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri loan to the Whitney Museum, NY in 2025
She Always Believed the Good about Those She Loved, 2018, oil on canvas
Amy Sherald, American born 1973. Private loan to the Whitney Museum, NY in 2025
When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be (Self-imagined atlas), 2018.
Amy Sherald, American born 1973. Exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY I don’t recall when. Current location not known.
Mama Has Made the Bread (How Things are Measured), 2018, oil on canvas
Amy Sherald, American born 1973. Private loan to the Whitney Museum, NY in 2025
Photo in the NY Times on 11/12/2025 of Michelle Obama being prepared for a portrait for the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC. Photo by Carl Ray
Michelle LaVaughn Robinson, Obama, 2018, oil on linen
Amy Sherald, American born 1973. Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC loan to the Whitney Museum, NY in 2025
That this portrait does not show the characteristic asymmetry of Mrs. Obama’s resting face is an indication that the artist is drawing attention to the context of and reason for this image: the accomplishments of her life.
She had an inside and an outside now, and suddenly she knew how not to mix them, 2018, oil on canvas
Amy Sherald, American born 1973. Private loan to the Whitney Museum, NY in 2025
Planes, rockets and the spaces in between, 2018, oil on canvas
Amy Sherald, American born 1973. Baltimore Art Museum
Untitled (Opal), 2019, oil on linen
Amy Sherald, American born 1973. Private loan to the Whitney Museum, NY in 2025
If You Surrendered to the Air, You Could Ride It, 2019, oil on linen,
Amy Sherald, American born 1973. Whitney Museum of Art, NY
The artist used steel girders to draw out the atmosphere of a photograph of 1932 taken by Charles C. Ebbets (1905-1978): Lunch atop a Skyscraper: steel workers taking a break on a construction site high above Manhattan.
The Girl Next Door, 2019, oil on canvas
Amy Sherald, American born 1973. Private loan to the Whitney Museum, NY in 2025
Mural at 11th and Samson, Philadelphia, 2019
Amy Sherald, American born 1973, for the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program
The artist’s model was a schoolgirl.
Breonna Taylor, 2021, oil on linen
Amy Sherald, American born 1973. The Speed Art Museum, Louisville, KY loan to the Whitney Art Museum, NYin 2025
Breonna Taylor, a 26-year old emergency room technician, was killed in a police action by the Louisville Metro Police department on March 13, 2020.
She and her fiance, Kenneth Walker, were in their apartment when seven officers burst into the apartment.
The police officers were actually pursuing, for drug dealing, a completely different man also called Walker. This man lived 10 miles away.
The officers claimed that they announced themselves but Kenneth Walker, hearing nothing, shot towards the officers. The officers shot 32 rounds. Breonna Taylor died. Kenneth Walker was injured in the leg.
The charge against Kenneth Walker for firing at police was dismissed one year later.
The policeman whose shots killed Breonna Taylor was not indicted, let alone tried. Nor was a second policeman who shot into the apartment but whose shots did not harm anyone.
A third officer was punished for firing through the door of Breonna Taylor’s apartment and the patios of her neighbours. He was given 33 months in prison for violating one count of Breonna Taylor’s civil rights. This is a Federal penalty for a state crime.
The family were later given monetary compensation and a promise that police procedures would be reviewed and revised.
Vanity Fair magazine commissioned this portrait of Breonna Taylor. Her mother, Tamika Palmer, helped design the painting. Her daughter wears a ring on her finger to represent her love for her partner, Kenneth Walker.
As American as Apple Pie, 2021, oil on canvas
Amy Sherald, American born 1973. Private loan to the Whitney Museum, NY in 2025
A Midsummer Afternoon Dream. 2021, oil on linen
Amy Sherald, American born 1973. Private loan to the Whitney Museum, NY in 2025
A God-Blessed Land (Empire of Dirt), 2022, oil on linen
Amy Sherald, American born 1973. Private loan to the Whitney Museum, NY in 2025
Kingdom, 2022, oil on linen
Amy Sherald, American born 1973. Artist loan to the Whitney Museum, NY in 2025
As Soft As She Is, 2023, oil on linen
Amy Sherald, American born 1973. Tate Gallery, London loan to the Whitney Museum, NY in 2025
In her painting below, For Love, and for Country, Amy Sherald reinterprets the photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt (American born Germany, 1898-1995) on V-J Day, August 14, 1945, where a sailor famously kissed a nurse.
Sherald’s portrays two Black male sailors kissing.
For Love of Country, 2022, oil on linen.
Amy Sherald, American born 1973. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art loan to the Whitney Museum, NY in 2025
In the Garden of Herself, 2024, oil on canvas
Amy Sherald, American born 1973. Artist loan to the Whitney Museum, NY in 2025
American Grit, 2024, oil on linen
Amy Sherald, American born 1973. Artist loan to the Whitney Museum, NY in 2025
This image may be of Zion Clark (American born 1997), the Mixed Martial Artist fighter who was born without legs. No commentary was offered at this exhibition about this image.
The image below, Trans Forming Liberty, was condemned by the Trump administration.
The artist chose to cancel the presentation of the exhibition at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC rather than have any part of it censored. The Smithsonian’s institutions are financed to 62% by the Federal Government and has come under ideological censorship since the beginning of Donald Trump’s second term.
The artist’s response was:
“I cannot in good conscience comply with a culture of censorship, especially when it targets vulnerable communities.”
“At a time when transgender people are being legislated against, silenced, and endangered across our nation,” she added, “silence is not an option.”
Trans Forming Liberty, 2024, oil on linen
Amy Sherald, American born 1973. Artist loan to the Whitney Museum, NY in 2025
Ecclesia (The Meaning of Inheritance and Horizons), 2024, below is the artist’s first triptych.
Ecclesia means a community of believers.
The margins of the earth are primary memorial grounds for African Americans.
Ecclesia (The Meeting of Inheritance and Horizons), 2024, oil on linen
Amy Sherald, American born 1973. Artist loan to the Whitney Museum, NY in 2025
This is a wonderful post, Sarah! The images you shared are absolutely breathtaking, and your commentary captures the quiet strength of Sherald’s work perfectly.