Amy Sherald

USA

Oil on canvas

Amy Sherald (b. 1973, Columbus, Georgia) is one of the most in-demand painters working today. Her official portrait of Michelle Obama for the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery became the most viewed portrait in the institution's history. Known for painting Black subjects in monochromatic skin tones against vivid, flat backgrounds, her work reframes the conventions of portraiture and art historical representation. Her traveling exhibition American Sublime was on view at the Whitney Museum in 2025. Represented by Hauser and Wirth.

Sherald does not paint what she sees. She paints what she imagines — a world in which Black subjects occupy the full space of leisure, dignity, and beauty that has historically been denied them in Western painting. Her canvases are acts of counter-history and radical optimism simultaneously.