Amy Sherald

The one artist who actually had influence over me was Bo Bartlett.

Once my paintings are complete, the model no longer lives in the painting as themselves. I see something bigger, more symbolic - an archetype.

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.

Success, for me, is staying true to who you are and not deviating off a path.

When I found photography, I found this other kind of portraiture of black families and black people who were photographing themselves or having themselves photographed in ways they wanted to be seen.

Art was not a thing for my family and is still not a thing for my family. My family will not go to a museum unless I say we have to go there. That's why I really feel like it was something I was supposed to do because there was no directive that pushed me in that direction.

Imagination allows you to bend the rules of the temporal world.

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.

A lot of the artists that people equate my work to, I didn't find out about until after graduate school.

Becoming an artist is not empirical; it's not about hard work. You have to put the work in, but that doesn't mean you're going to make it.

When people ask me about color in my work, I tend to say that it came from spending a lot of time in Panama.