Endless Palettes, Honoring Amy Sherald – Gordon Parks Foundation Gala
I remember where I was when I first saw Amy Sherald. I was standing in the home of Arthur Lewis, a dear friend, collector, and an unapologetic patron of Black Art. We were in his living room staring at her painting entitled, A GOLDEN AFTERNOON. This was 2016, Amy was two years away from unveiling First Lady Michelle Obama’s Official portrait for the National Portrait Gallery. We hadn’t uttered a word to each other, because she wasn’t in the room. But her painting was. And it said so much. It allowed me to know the heart of this woman, who I would officially meet a year later on the cusp of her becoming one of the best-known Black American Artists of our time.
It was an awe struck encounter. I didn’t have words. But my dear friend Arthur did when we talked about her for hours that night. He said he was instantly drawn to the deep saturation of color in her painting style. It forced him to count the colors it took to make the painting. I would go back to visit A Golden Afternoon and found myself counting the colors too, I also got lost in her brush strokes.
What we decided was that Amy Sherald captures Blackness in a state of perpetual elevation. No one does it better. I’m happy for my dear friend — he owns a masterpiece. After studying her portraits, I wanted to meet the woman I already knew. I finally met Amy.
We had an immediate connection. Turns out she met me through my “portrait” work too. She on the canvas and me on the screen, we are two artists who layer our art with the love and life of our experience and the collective pains and joys that we and our ancestors know from surviving this America… and relentlessly choosing to thrive here too. There are many brush stokes to our Black lives that make up our elegance. Many colors to use. Our palettes are endless… And Amy finds them in every portrait she paints of us.
Amy’s paintings echo the layered “perpetual elegance” Gordon Parks always found through his lens. Her body of work feels as if she dips her paintbrush in her heart to ensure she translates our humanity with the proper pace of our pulse.
She is a champion of our lives’ dignity and she eulogized it on canvas for US to see. For US To look at. For US To reflect upon. For US to stop grinding, slow down and finally see, perhaps for the first time, how we truly look in the world. Her paintings promise that when we look to ourselves, we can stand in awe of our beauty and courage and resilience and perhaps like me… take an earned moment to weep.
Amy’s paintings also invite us to accept our beauty. Accept that our bodies can be still and not be interpreted as lazy and shiftless… but mighty. Dignified. Serene. Purposed. And accounted for. There is a knowing that these people in her portraits belong to somebody. Someone is waiting for them to return home.
Amy dances with the nuances of who we are, because she first took the time to dance with herself.
As this Georgia native has stated herself, when you visit her work, she intentionally painted in grey scale to challenge our ideas of race. Her subjects are there to meet you as they are. To be present with you in that moment. And in that moment you are the witness to her own sovereignty, where she, like a lot of her Black contemporary artists who intentionally approach their work as a curiosity about themselves, sees herself. Through her art, she takes the time to explore who she is, versus educating people about who she is.
Amy dances with the nuances of who we are, because she first took the time to dance with herself. Look closely at her paintings and you will see between each brush stroke, she encouraged herself to make paintings that focus on our inner, complex lives and “escape that public Black identity.”
I will speak for all of us when we say thank you Amy for following your mission and your vision that places more complex stories of Black life in the forefront of people’s minds. They get to meet the viewer as themselves. Not black and not white, but the grey scale that defines us as human.
Ladies and gentleman, it is my honor to present the GORDON PARKS AWARD to my friend, the incomparable Amy Sherald.
PHOTOS: The Gordon Parks Foundation Awards Dinner and Auction | May 23, 2023 New York City, New York
Absolutely beautiful and rewarding article from one beautiful lady saluting another. Brilliant BRAVO
Great article.