Amy Sherald

I'm not a very verbal person. ”

Just because someone said painting is dead doesn't mean that it's a fact or the truth - painting is the soul food of art, in a way. ”

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. ”