--- title: Amy Sherald Would Rather Walk Away Than Water Down Her Art Is on the 2026 TIME100 Art List description: Find out why Amy Sherald Would Rather Walk Away Than Water Down Her Art is one of 2026's 100 most influential people in art. canonical: https://time.com/collection/time100-art/2026/amy-sherald/ article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2026-09-17T12:01:23.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-09-21T14:55:20.443Z og:title: Amy Sherald Would Rather Walk Away Than Water Down Her Art: TIME100 Art 2026 og:description: Find out why Amy Sherald Would Rather Walk Away Than Water Down Her Art is on the list og:url: https://time.com/collection/time100-art/2026/amy-sherald/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte312eecaaa6d478a/6aa40a833d452722c738487a/t100-art-2026-sherald.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9%2Coffset-x100.00%2Coffset-y0.00 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: Amy Sherald Would Rather Walk Away Than Water Down Her Art: TIME100 Art 2026 og:type: article twitter:card: summary twitter:title: Amy Sherald Would Rather Walk Away Than Water Down Her Art: TIME100 Art 2026 twitter:description: Find out why Amy Sherald Would Rather Walk Away Than Water Down Her Art is on the list twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte312eecaaa6d478a/6aa40a833d452722c738487a/t100-art-2026-sherald.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9%2Coffset-x100.00%2Coffset-y0.00 --- Sep 17, 2026 # Amy Sherald Would Rather Walk Away Than Water Down Her Art > Sponsored content. 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From painting Michelle Obama's portrait to pulling out of a Smithsonian solo show, Amy Sherald reflects on the art and trials that shaped her._ People painter by [Belinda Luscombe](https://time.com/author/belinda-luscombe/) ## Belinda Luscombe Editor at Large  Photograph by Tyler Mitchell for TIME Nobody knows in advance the moment that will change everything, but some of [Amy Sherald](https://time.com/collections/women-of-the-year/7377876/amy-sherald/)’s friends sensed something was up. The artist had been called to meet Barack and Michelle Obama as they decided who would paint their official portraits. Her best friend’s mother insisted on taking her to MaxMara and buying her a taupe sheath and kitten heels. When she walked into the Oval Office, both the President and the First Lady were wearing the same color. The President quipped that she must have gotten the memo. Sherald did not get the joke. But she did get the job that changed her life: the [portrait of Michelle Obama](https://time.com/collections/firsts/5444990/amy-sherald-firsts/) that is the highlight of “American Sublime,” the blockbuster show of Sherald’s work that is just finishing an almost two-year, four-museum national tour.  Photograph by Tyler Mitchell for TIME Color has always been important to Sherald, as anyone with even a brief acquaintance with her paintings can tell. She paints all her canvases red before she paints them gray. “I think color lives whether you can see it or not,” she says in her Jersey City, N.J., studio, a few feet from a giant pegboard filled with hundreds of paint tubes held up by bulldog clips. “So I consider the red kind of like the blood behind the figures there.” Maybe that’s why, even though she paints everyone in gray tones, Sherald’s people pulse with life. Sometimes they float off dirt bikes, or balance on tractors, or hold a doll or a baby or an outsize teacup, but mostly they command attention, looking evenly at the viewer, wearing bright clothes in front of a vivid background. “Color is my natural language,” says Sherald, 53\. “Using my voice is only the third best way that I communicate.” Her inspirations for the color and the composition of her work come from paintings, she says. But the subject matter is mostly inspired by photography, because that is what she grew up seeing, in family portraits and encyclopedias. Once she finds a subject, she photographs them in an outfit she has preselected. Often the clothing is the starting point. (She’s in the early stages of a work inspired by a vintage Girl Scouts uniform.) Despite her most famous painting, she doesn’t call herself a portraitist. “Once I take the photograph, the model just becomes a character in the world that I'm trying to create,” she says. “This is now a part of this greater picture and this greater story.”  Photograph by Tyler Mitchell for TIME Successful artists are the product of their gifts, but as Sherald proves, they are also products of what they lacked. Sherald grew up in a home that followed the teachings of the Worldwide Church of God, which did not celebrate, among other things, birthdays, Halloween, movies, most dancing, and TV. Her home kept a Sabbath on Saturdays. Not that Sherald minded. “For me as a child who was self-conscious and introverted, I would choose to stay in and draw rather than go outside,” she says. “It was like a safe way to play that was not with other people.” Her father, a dentist, was diagnosed with Parkinson's when she was 7\. She would often just sit with him. “When you have a parent that doesn't communicate well and they're also going through something they want to hide from you, it kind of opens up another way of learning about emotion and communication.” Famously, it was on a school trip that Sherald saw Bo Bartlett’s painting _Object Permanence_, centered on a Black man in a tool belt, which inspired her to depict Black people as she saw them. “It was just about looking. Looking back at our history and painting the things that I didn't see,” she says. “Art history tells me that I'm elevating my people, but I'm not. That's just the story that's projected onto my storytelling. They're already there.” She and [Bartlett](https://www.bobartlett.com/rabbit-hole) are now friends. Recognition for Sherald’s work came slowly, then all at once. Just before she had her heart transplant, at 39, after she stopped waitressing to look after her brother, she sold a painting for $3,000\. Her friends set up a [GoFundMe](https://helphopelive.org/campaign/3448/?utm%5Fsource=chatgpt.com) page for her medical costs. “I'm sure some people were like, ‘Poor Amy, she wants to be an artist,’” she says. “‘She's still working at this restaurant, like it's obvious it's not gonna happen.’” In 2019, a year after the Obama portrait was unveiled, her work [_Innocent You, Innocent Me_](https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-6204865) sold for $350,000 at Christie’s. A mere 18 months later, [_The Bathers_](https://www.phillips.com/detail/amy-sherald/NY010720/1) netted $4.26 million at auction. She found the sudden uptick in wealth and fame difficult. “People don't think you've earned it,” she says. “And there's pressure to do more because you have this success.” The heart transplant has made Sherald, who has books about overcoming anxiety in her office, even more cautious. She wanted to take up cycling but realized a fall could hurt her hand. She no longer rides roller coasters. She lost her father when she was 27 and brother to lung cancer when he was 38\. Her sister also recently had a heart transplant. But if those health crises have made her wary, they did not make her scared. In 2025, after officials at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery, the same institution that commissioned the Obama portrait, got skittish about exhibiting her painting _Trans Forming Liberty,_ which features a trans woman, she pulled the show. “‘American Sublime’ has its own narrative,” she says. “Deviating from that narrative would be deviating from the core person of who I am and why the work exists in the world, and I just wasn't willing to do that.” The exhibition was snapped up by the [Baltimore Museum of Art](https://artbma.org/exhibition/amy-sherald-american-sublime/), where it broke attendance records.  Photograph by Tyler Mitchell for TIME Sherald, to quote the old gospel song, wouldn’t take nothing for her journey now. “There's only one person I've ever been envious of in my life, and that was [Oprah Winfrey](https://time.com/collections/time100-philanthropy-2025/7286085/oprah-winfrey/) when she was giving away cars to people,” she says. “I want to be able to do that. I want someone to give me enough money that I can set up a big foundation where there's rolling grants for artists for medical care, for housing, for studios. Because that's all we need to become who we want to be: time and money.” In the meantime, she’s delighted by the life she has been given. “I think,” she says, “art definitely chose me.” _Set by Nicole Roosien; Hair by Nikki Nelms at The Only Agency; Makeup by Joseph Carrillo; Styling: Law Roach at The Only Agency; Cover look: Bora Aksu; Studio environmental: Erdem; Blue background: JW Anderson; Videos:_ Roksanda dress, Alexis Bittar jewels. TIME100 Art | Amy Sherald ## Transcript I'm sure some people were like poor Amy, like she wants to be an artist. She's 35. She's still working at this restaurant. I think there's only one person I've ever been envious of in my life. That's what makes good work. Good work is that your story is in it. You were a little Catholic school student and a teacher. I think Mrs. Davis was her name. Jerry Davis? Yeah, she was my art teacher. She sort of noticed your talent. Yes. Uh, and was that the first point where you where art occurred to you as something that you could do? I think it was art was something that I did naturally. It was something that for me as a child that was self-conscious and introverted, I would choose to stay in at recess and draw rather than go outside. So for me, it was like a safe way to play, but with myself and not with other people. Um, what she saw in me in high school was the opportunity to help me grow as an artist and as a person. And she was the first person to talk to me about painting and drawing my own ideal, which is representing myself and my work, which I found now to be pretty profound coming from a white woman. I was in an all white Catholic school and she understood what I needed to become. But did you grow up surrounded. By some kind, by art of some kind or visual representation of some kind? No. I grew up in a very conservative household. Um, we. Were nondenominational Christians. Um, we couldn't celebrate birthdays. We kept the Sabbath. So no TV from Friday night to Saturday night. Um, couldn't wear makeup. Um, my mom very rarely let us watch television and I only went to the movies twice. So the first movie I saw was Puff the Magic Dragon, and the second movie I saw was E.T.. And then after that, I didn't go to the movies until I was probably out of high school because it just wasn't something that they led. So no Halloween. Like it was very insular. So like I was, I've always been inside of my head a lot. Do you maintain a faith tradition? No. I had to lose it in order to become my full self. No offense to anybody that because my my family is still, you know, they're still churchgoers. So your ascent was pretty fast, like you were it was obviously probably felt slow to you because you did a lot of. But when you feel fast, when you took off, you really. Your career really took off. And I wonder if you thought that had advantages and disadvantages to. You know, a lot of people would love that kind of, um, sudden success. And I wonder if it comes with ups and downs. It's um to be real transparent. It's, it's difficult one because I think people don't think you've earned it. Um, two there's the, there's just pressure to, to do more because you have this, you know, you have this success now. Um, and three, honestly, for me, it was, I'm glad it happened later in my life. I was in my mid 40s, but, um, there's nobody there to prepare you for, from going from making no money to making a lot of money. So like just learning on the spot about pre estimate tax payments or, you know, like, wait a minute, what? Like I wasn't able to pay this kind of money last year, but now I owe it, you know, so it was just, it was a lot, it was a lot. It felt like a lot. I think I'm just coming down from it. And it's been a little less than eight years, and I think I'm finally getting a grasp on what it means and what this is, what this has become for me. Do you feel. The responsibility of of fame? I do. I feel it to my community. Um, I feel it's a young artist out there that I know are dreaming big. And, um, the fact that making art is not empirical and that they can go to school, they can go to an art school and come out with $200,000 worth of debt and then still have to try to make something with, you know, with the education that they got. Um, so yeah, I think there's only one person I've ever been envious of in my life. And that was Oprah Winfrey. And I remember the moment when she was giving away cars to people. You get a car. Yeah. And I was like, that's like, if I, I want to do, I want to be able to do that. Like I want. I want someone to give me enough money that I can set up a big foundation where there's like rolling grants for artists, for medical care, for housing, for studios, like whatever we might need, because that's all we need to become who we want to be, which is time and money. And it's just hard to maintain a practice when you have to go out into the world and work. Oprah Winfrey is the only person you've been jealous of. Yeah. Not Leonardo da Vinci. I mean, I guess not alive, but there's no no one else you'd rather be besides you. Well, yeah. Because she. Yeah. She changes people's lives and and even seeing that can sound a little strange, but that's. I think that's the bone that. I mean, I grew up with a father who had a dental practice, but then he also opened up a practice in a small rural town and allowed people to pay him with milk and eggs so that they could have their dental, you know. Their they could have a dentist in their community, but they didn't have money to pay for the dental work. You had a heart transplant when you were 39, is that right? And I think your sister also. Yes she did. Uh, years later, but yeah. How how does that change one's outlook? I mean, you hadn't achieved huge success by that time. Yeah. But did it did you get scared and think I need to, you know, have health insurance or did you get you think I'm just going harder on the painting? Going harder. Yeah. I felt like I didn't have anything to lose. Um, and I knew like, while I was waiting, I knew I had to, you know, reconcile like how far I'd come in my life. And although, you know, I just sold the painting for $3,000, which was so much money back then. Um. I felt gratitude and satisfaction with the fact that I had not given up, that I had continued to push through, that I was like a waitress all through my 30s, that I didn't let people discourage me because I'm sure some people were like, poor Amy, like she wants to be an artist. She's 35. She's still working at this restaurant. Like it's obvious it's not going to happen, you know, but I, I believe, you know, I said every day in my studio and I imagined the life that I wanted to live. And I imagine the shows that I wanted to have. And they happened. So thoughts really do become things. The show that is currently on, I think it's been touring American Sublime. It was supposed to go to the National Portrait Gallery. You withdrew it from the National Portrait Gallery, which must have been a big decision because they gave you a prize very early in your career. That was a big marker of success. And also the Obama commissions, you know, those were commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery. Can you tell me a little bit about your, you know, your thinking about it? And also if you feel like there could be a rapprochement, uh, a détente. I keep using French words. A coming together. Do I feel like there could be a coming together with. With back with the National Portrait Gallery? Oh. Um. And this administration. No, but I mean, I think, I think, uh, for me, like, I just was not willing to compromise what my vision was, nor was I willing to compromise the integrity of my models. And, um, it just, it just came down to that, like, American Sublime has its own narrative. And deviating from that narrative would be deviating from my core, the core person of who I am and why the work exists in the world, and I just wasn't willing to do that. And sounds to me that that wasn't a very hard decision for you. You didn't at all. I'm a Virgo. I'm a I'm a do gooder. I love to do good. Uh. And so did you make the call or did you have people make the call? I can't really say, but, um. They found out after the fact. So nobody. Could look at your paintings and without being struck by the color. And I wondered, what does color mean to you? Where, where does your color sense come from? I don't even know. I mean, like, people ask me this question and I kind of look back at my life and try to figure out where. But, um, I think it's my natural language. Like color is my natural language. I don't feel like, um, you know, using my voice is like the. It's the third best way that I communicate. Um, but I did spend time in, uh, Portobelo, Panama when I was in my early 20s, uh, with the Spelman College art colony. And I just, you know, when I think back, I think about my godfather, Arturo Lindsays home and his walls were painted all these different colors. And he also had very colorful work. Um, but I think because the paintings are, um. Minimalist figuration, if you will, I think there's each component becomes so important and I have to give so much thought into it for it to really hold a story, and then also hold the body of the model and create the portal that allows the viewer to fall in. Um, and so it's just become how I communicate. I mean, it's, yeah, I don't, I really don't know. I just think it's just, you know, we're, we're born this way. When you grew up and when I grew up, the ascendant art form was Abstract Expressionism. That was what I went to look at. That's what we talked about, you know, not figuration. Yeah. And I wondered, did your art mentors never say, yeah, figuration? Not so much. Amy, you got to think about what are your feelings? Splash the paint. I don't mean any insult to the Expressionists who I love. No, I mean, I've I tried that, I remember I made my first abstract painting when I was like 7 or 8, and it wasn't good. And that's not why I didn't pursue it. But I think I'm such a humanist that it just, um, being able to speak through painting the body just is what became more salient for me. But I read abstract paintings really well, and I think when it's done well, there's still the foreground, the middle, the middle ground, the background, there's still symmetry asymmetry. There's still a color story. Like it's really complicated and difficult to make abstract work. I think it's more difficult than making figurative work. You know, it's the difference between listening to a classical symphony and then listening to John Coltrane's album, The Love Supreme. I mean, it's and it was the beginning of deconstructing all that we knew and how those things that we knew existed in music and in art. And so when you look at it that way, we were just asking all these big questions and it's just like really fascinating to see where it brought us and what came out of it. So like, thank God Jackson Pollock was like, I don't know. I'm just gonna do this. I'm just gonna throw some paint around and then everybody's like, is this art or is it is it not art? But what if nobody ever asked that question? This is really about approaching everything with curiosity. In your process, you you take a photograph and you've talked about how the photograph is very a very important part of your the process of making, making a work. Do you feel and and you've in fact, made, you know, reproduced photographs, you know, I Alfred Eisenstaedt photo and, and I wonder, do you feel like you are influenced more by the history of figurative artists or, or photography? Like, is it, is it both or is it hard to pass out? I want to say it's photography. I want to say compositionally speaking, it's probably painting color story. It's, it's painting, subject matter photography. Um, but it's just because it was what was available to me when I was at home, I spent a lot of time looking at my family albums, looking at pictures, um, and then learning about Frederick Douglass in college and then understanding like the power of the photograph and, um, how he used the photograph in his life as an abolitionist. Um, and so I think the work slowly became the meditation on photography for me, but I think paintings and photographs hold different energies, um, that communicate to one another, but I think they're very different energies. I can't tell. Have you ever done a self-portrait? I haven't, I'm waiting. It's going to be I don't know what I'm going to do, but like sometimes I'm like, should I make one and then take it to auction? And then that's my whole retirement plan. It's like. It's like Amy Sherald painted herself one time. Who's gonna get it? You know? The last artist I interviewed, I think, was Rashid Johnson. I love him. And he said that when people make art, we are negotiating with our own biographies. Mhm. Do you think that's true for you? 100%. I think that's what makes good work. Good work is that your story is in it. Other than that, I feel I feel as if it can be contrived or, you know, I mean, even our way or any of these artists, like their stories are in the work. It doesn't have to be literal, but their stories become a part of why they make what they make, because otherwise it may not be coming from a genuine place. And I think people can sense that when you're asking them to buy into something like buy into this idea that I'm presenting here, if it's not coming from a place of authenticity, then I think the viewer can can pick up on that. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://time.com/collection/time100-art/2026/amy-sherald/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/collection/time100-art/2026/amy-sherald/"},"headline":"Amy Sherald Would Rather Walk Away Than Water Down Her Art","datePublished":"2026-09-17T12:01:23.000Z","dateModified":"2026-09-21T14:55:20.443Z","description":"From painting Michelle Obama's portrait to pulling out of a Smithsonian solo show, Amy Sherald reflects on the art and trials that shaped her.","url":"https://time.com/collection/time100-art/2026/amy-sherald/","keywords":["TIME100 Art 2026","list","franchise","Accolades","Magazine"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte312eecaaa6d478a/6aa40a833d452722c738487a/t100-art-2026-sherald.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675%2Coffset-x100.00%2Coffset-y0.00&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Belinda Luscombe","jobTitle":"Editor at Large","url":"https://time.com/author/belinda-luscombe/"}],"creator":"Belinda Luscombe","articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte312eecaaa6d478a/6aa40a833d452722c738487a/t100-art-2026-sherald.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675%2Coffset-x100.00%2Coffset-y0.00&height=675","width":1200,"height":675}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/collection/time100-art/2026/","name":"TIME100 Art 2026"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/collection/time100-art/2026/amy-sherald/","name":"Amy Sherald Would Rather Walk Away Than Water Down Her Art"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"TIME100 Art | Why Amy Sherald withdrew \"American Sublime\" from the National Portrait Gallery","description":"From painting Michelle Obama's portrait to pulling out of a Smithsonian solo show, Amy Sherald reflects on the art and trials that shaped her.","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/bJtpUDtX/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2026-09-17T11:00:00.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/bJtpUDtX.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/collection/time100-art/2026/amy-sherald/","duration":"PT1M9S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/collection/time100-art/2026/amy-sherald/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"TIME100 Art | The one reason Amy Sherald envies Oprah","description":"From painting Michelle Obama's portrait to pulling out of a Smithsonian solo show, Amy Sherald reflects on the art and trials that shaped her.","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/M8j5nIX3/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2026-09-17T11:00:00.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/M8j5nIX3.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/collection/time100-art/2026/amy-sherald/","duration":"PT47S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/collection/time100-art/2026/amy-sherald/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"TIME100 Art | Amy Sherald","description":"From painting Michelle Obama's portrait to pulling out of a Smithsonian solo show, Amy Sherald reflects on the art and trials that shaped her.","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/VVptw1Ve/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2026-09-21T14:39:20.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/VVptw1Ve.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/collection/time100-art/2026/amy-sherald/","duration":"PT15M30S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/collection/time100-art/2026/amy-sherald/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```