Amy Sherald

Painter

1973-08-30

Amy Sherald is an American painter known for contemporary portraiture, including the official portrait of Michelle Obama.

Quotes by Amy Sherald

Success, for me, is staying true to who you are and not deviating off a path.
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Signing autographs is weird. I'm an introvert, so it's been a strain in that way.
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I've forgotten a lot of things. I've forgotten how to play the piano and how to speak Arabic, though I studied it for two years.
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My mother was willing to support art as a summer program for me. She never supported it as a career decision until I won the National Gallery Portrait Competition.
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In sociology, they call it 'code switching.' I can feel just as comfortable in a room full of people who don't look like me because I understand the social cues of class and race.
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Once my paintings are complete, the model no longer lives in the painting as themselves. I see something bigger, more symbolic - an archetype.
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I blacked out in a Rite Aid. The doctor told me my heart function was at 5 percent. I spent two months in the hospital waiting to have a transplant. For me, that was the end of the world.
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I'm painting the paintings that I want to see in museums. And I'm hopefully presenting them in a way that's universal enough that they become representative of something different than just a black body on a canvas.
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I'm not a very verbal person.
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To be human is to be visible.
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I want all types of people to look at my work and see themselves, just like I watch a Reese Witherspoon movie as a black woman and can empathize with her because we have had to internalize whiteness in that way to survive.
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