Amy Sherald, Precious Jewels by the Sea (2019). Collection of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas. Photo by Joseph Hyde, courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth, ©Amy Sherald.

Amy Sherald is a celebrated contemporary painter whose portraiture has redefined the visual language of North American realism by centering the everyday lives and experiences of Black Americans. Born in Columbus, Georgia, and now based in the New York area, Sherald is best known for her luminous, large scale paintings that combine grayscale skin tones with vibrant color to create striking, psychologically rich portraits.

Her groundbreaking practice has earned international recognition, including the 2016 Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition from the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery and the commission to paint the official portrait of former First Lady Michelle Obama.

Sherald’s work explores identity, representation, and the complexity of Black life through carefully composed images that celebrate dignity, individuality, and imagination. Her paintings have been exhibited at leading museums around the world and are held in major public and private collections, solidifying her place as one of the most influential artists of her generation.

Amy Sherald, Ecclesia (The Meeting of Inheritance and Horizons), 2024. Photo by Kelvin Bulluck, ©Amy Sherald, courtesy of Hauser & Wirth.

Through portraits that invite reflection and challenge conventional narratives, Sherald continues to expand conversations about race, history, and the power of seeing oneself represented in art.

Her acclaimed mid-career retrospective, Amy Sherald: American Sublime, is currently on view at the High Museum in Atlanta through September 27, 2026. The High is the fourth and final venue for this exhibition.

For the Silo, Leatrice Ellzy President and CEO National Black Arts Festival.

Featured image- Amy Sherald with her painting A God Blessed Land at her SFMOMA solo show “American Sublime.” Photo by Kelvin Bulluck, courtesy of SFMOMA.

Call & Response

I can’t believe a year has come and gone.

On July 1 of last year, I returned to Atlanta to lead the National Black Arts Festival. It was a significant homecoming, not only because I would be leading one of the nation’s iconic Black cultural institutions, but because NBAF is where my professional journey in Black arts and culture began. Like my first season directing the organization’s artistic programming in 2005-2006, this past year has been one of the most challenging, rewarding, and inspiring of my career.

When I accepted this role, I set three goals for the next decade: build a sustainable organization with a thoughtful succession plan, secure a permanent home for NBAF, and bring back the summer festival. Those goals remain, but over the past year they have evolved into something even greater.

Over the last twelve months, we’ve focused on strengthening the foundation of NBAF, and that work continues. We’ve reinforced our infrastructure, renewed relationships with funders, community leaders, longtime supporters, local and national artists, and colleagues across the cultural sector. We’ve reorganized our team and spent countless hours listening, learning, and imagining what this institution can and should become.

While we are very present in the realities of today, we are equally focused on building an institution that will outlive us all. One that preserves Black cultural memory, invests in artists, and creates opportunities for young people. One that convenes courageous conversations and interrogates culture. One that strengthens communities and ensures Black art and culture continue to shape the future rather than simply respond to it.

Quite frankly, this work has never been more important.

Let’s name what many of us already know. We are living through a moment in which Black history, Black institutions, and Black culture have become political. Federal support for the arts has been reduced. Organizations across the country are losing funding. For institutions like NBAF, even having the word Black in our name has become a barrier in rooms where it once represented an opportunity. That reality should concern all of us.

Culture has always been one of the first places where societies negotiate who belongs, whose stories matter, and who gets to author the future. We remain deeply grateful to the foundations, corporations, and individual donors who support us. Their investment in cultural continuity and in institutions that safeguard our collective memory are shaping the future.

The months between now and the end of the year will be pivotal. The support we receive will determine the pace in which we build the infrastructure our mission requires and how boldly we move toward the next chapter of NBAF. As we prepare for the return of our summer festival, every investment made today strengthens our ability to serve artists, audiences, and communities tomorrow.

If you’ve ever wondered how you can make a difference, this is your moment. Visit nbaf.org to make a gift, join the Collector’s Guild, purchase your ticket to Fall For Brunch, explore sponsorship opportunities for the return of the 2027 National Black Arts Festival or become a Volunteer.

Thank you for believing in this work. Thank you for showing up. Thank you for investing in an institution that exists to preserve our cultural memory, amplify Black creativity, and ensure that Black narratives continue to be authored by Black voices.

Sincerely,

Leatrice Ellzy, President & CEO
National Black Arts Festival

When I first walked into Stephen Bulger Gallery to see Joan Lyons’s retrospective exhibition, I exclaimed without much thought: These are so contemporary!

A truly inane statement on my part, for many reasons. First, Joan Lyons is a contemporary artist who continues to make work into her 80s. Secondly, the work I was referring to was made in 1973, not the 1700s. And lastly, why would something being “contemporary” necessarily be a compliment?

Untitled (from the Artifacts Portfolio), 1973 © Joan Lyons / courtesy Stephen Bulger Gallery

I guess what I meant is that there’s an enduring quality to the work.

Photography, at its best, can capture something fundamental about the human condition. This is exactly what Lyons does. I look at her photographs, and I see myself, despite the half-century of time between us. Whether a frustrating conversation with a male doctor, a jacket that I could see myself wearing, or the faces of a woman staring unwaveringly at the camera—there I am.

In “Xerox Transfer Drawings: Women’s Portrait Series,” which spanned from 1972-1980, Lyons set out to capture historical representations of women, by women. Through multiple transfers of the Xerox machine—I recall creating similar portraits as a young girl visiting my mom at work—a single image is constructed. “They are not naturalistic, but awkward in gesture, immobile and flattened—women frozen in their representations,” writes Lyons in the accompanying description of the work. “They countermand the idea of a photographic portrait as the record of a fleeting moment. In the 1970s, I was seeking to find myself as a woman within my culture and to locate my art practice within the history of artmaking.”

In these photographs, the image plane is skewed at an unnatural angle.

It’s like gravity doesn’t exist. The portraits feel close, as if the bodies are pressed up against the other side of the glass. The lack of any telling historical or geographic information in these images creates an artifact that exists outside of time.

Lyons writes that she was interested in “constructing,” rather than “taking,” a photograph. This construction of a photographic image is central to most, if not all, of Lyons’s work. Her exhibition at Stephen Bulger Gallery through February 28 feels like a journey through the history of photography.

Lyons wasn’t precious about what camera she used or pledged a relentless allegiance to one brand.

Instead, she used various techniques and equipment—including Xerography, screen-printing, Diazo paper, large-format Polaroids, digital cameras and pinhole photography—as a way to communicate. Through the quirks and features of each, Lyons leans into the medium’s uses and misuses, wielding the camera to best capture not only the reality of life but also its undercurrents of emotion.

Polaroids

About her series of large-scale Polaroids from 1980, Lyons writes: “ ‘Presences’ is an investigation of photographic portraiture. The images have a lot to do with multiple selves and with faces as masks. In these long exposures, bodies move, and backgrounds are stationary.” The images are jarring at times; my mind can’t compute how they were achieved. A face is slightly disfigured with motion or seemingly collaged together. In another, a woman in the foreground is oversaturated and blurry, whereas the background is crisply in focus and well saturated. The blend of abstraction and realism compresses time. These photographs are not snapshots meant to capture a single moment. By shunning this style of capture, they capture something more viscerally close to the unusual reality of life.

Me, reflected

I couldn’t help but photograph myself within the negative space of one of the Polaroid photographs, layering my face on top of the subjects. A mask on a mask. A photograph of a photograph. Another layer of history. For the Silo, Tatum Dooley/artforecast.

The Silo

Tag Archives: woman artist

CREATIVE Artist Feature AMY SHERALD

Call & Response

A Review Of Joan Lyons At Stephen Bulger Gallery Toronto

I guess what I meant is that there’s an enduring quality to the work.

In these photographs, the image plane is skewed at an unnatural angle.

Lyons wasn’t precious about what camera she used or pledged a relentless allegiance to one brand.

Polaroids

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