Amy Sherald

Michelle Obama is extraordinary, but she is also the kind of woman that exists in a way that is - she's a hundred percent relatable to all kinds of people, all genders all around the world. ”

The people I choose as models have a quality that seems to contain the past, the present, and the future all at once. It's hard to explain. I can look at 100 people in a room but only find it in one person. ”

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. ”

I want my portraits to create a space where blackness can breathe. ”

I don't think anybody can create in a space where they don't feel comfortable. ”

To be human is to be visible. ”

My father wanted me to be a dentist like him, or any doctor, really. There was this attitude of, 'The civil rights movement was not about you being an artist.' ”

When I'm painting and in the zone, it's difficult for me to stop. It can take me half a day to get into that space, and once I do, I only talk to a certain few people who won't disrupt it. Home to sleep and back at it, nothing else outside of getting food. Everything else is an annoyance getting in my way. ”

I am relieved that I can pay back my school loans. ”

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. ”