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
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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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