58 SMITHSONIAN.COM | December 2019
As I work, I’ll have [the Netfl ix series] “Chef ’s Table” playing in
the background, because I fi nd inspiration in their practices
and what they do. We’re both working with these very basic,
rudimentary tools. Broccoli is always going to be broccoli,
there’s no new vegetable that’s going to pop up. Similarly, I
work with brushes and paint. We take these tools and make
something wonderful out of them.How did winning the National Portrait Gallery’s
competition aff ect your career?
The $50 submission fee is the best investment I ever made.
I knew at that point in my career, after my heart transplant
recovery, I needed something to put me out there. It defi nitely
put me on an international stage and introduced many peo-
ple to my craft. From there I obtained gallery status, which
exposed my work to the art market. The paintings sold, and
then suddenly there was a waiting list. I began a crazy work
schedule knowing I needed to produce 12 paintings a year.the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery’s Outwin Boochever
Portrait Competition. No woman had won the contest in its 12
years. “The night of the award announcement, I thought, I’m
not going to get one,” Sherald recalls. “Then I heard my name.”
She took the grand prize. “Sherald creates innovative,
dynamic portraits that, through color and form, confront
the psychological eff ects of stereotypical imagery on Afri-
can-American subjects,” the citation said. The
next year, fi rst lady Michelle Obama selected
Sherald to paint her offi cial portrait, bring-
ing unimagined public attention. When the
painting was unveiled, in 2018, it drove record
numbers of visitors to the National Portrait
Gallery—so many the work was relocated to a
larger room to accommodate the crowds.
This past fall, crowds fl ocked to view Sher-
ald’s fi rst New York solo exhibition, at the
Hauser & Wirth gallery. The show, titled “the
heart of the matter...,” consists of eight new
portraits in rainbow hues, starring ordinary
people Sherald had encountered by chance
in Baltimore and New York and later photo-
graphed at her studio. Her subjects’ complex-
ions , however, are painted in Sherald’s signa-
ture grisaille, or gray scale—“an absence of
color that directly challenges perceptions of
black identity,” the gallery says.
Nearly life-size, dressed casually or in work
uniforms or in their Sunday best, her sub-
jects invite viewers to linger and refl ect. The
gigantic 9-foot by 10-foot painting If you sur-
rendered to the air, you could ride it (the title
comes from Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon)
shows a young man perched on a green con-
struction beam, gazing toward and above the
viewer—an ode to Charles C. Ebbets’ iconic
photograph Lunch atop a Skyscraper that also
subtly comments on the overlooked triumphs
of black laborers in America. Another painting,
Sometimes the king is a woman, shows a self-
assured woman in a striking, black-and-white
zigzag-patterned dress against a bright pink
background. Her unassuming yellow earrings
seem to whisper a charge to women every-
where—“The time is now,” perhaps.
On a brisk October afternoon, a line wraps
around the block outside Hauser & Wirth in
Manhattan. Inside, stylish patrons chat and snap selfi es and
stare at Sherald’s monumental paintings. In a back offi ce, the
artist sits with her dog, August Wilson, named for the play-
wright, to speak with Smithsonian.
What would people be surprised to know about you?
Many might be surprised to fi nd out that if I wasn’t an artist,
I might be a chef. I was really good at cooking, at a young age.
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