In this exhibition, Sherald plays with traditional American symbology through the portrayal of vehicles such I really believe there’s a transference of energy from a model to the painter to the brush to the canvas,” she explained. “There’s some people that I’ve photographed that didn’t feel like they were weighted enough or there wasn’t enough… not life, but maybe a weathered soul. He’s a young man who takes life seriously and I just felt moved to paint him. It’s an intuitive thing.”

Amy Sherald’s To Tell Her Story You Must Walk in Her Shoes, 2022. Photograph: Joseph Hyde/Amy Sherald/Hauser & Wirth

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Next up is academic Kevin Quashie (‘I quote his work often’, Sherald says later, crediting him as the inspiration for her greyscale skintones), who describes, in terms at once more personal and more abstract, the operations of desire, ideology and the aesthetic of what he calls ‘mere beauty’ in the artist’s work. Coates goes in for a more personal look at the artist in an inter-view that eventually, but too slowly, becomes a conversation. It’s biography that is the key to Sherald’s work here. We learn about Sherald’s heart transplant, the role of faith in her life and how important the experience of painting a portrait of Michelle Obama in 2017 was to her career and her sense of being a public figure afterwards. Collectively it’s a little confused. But the illustrations are great. Despite all the changes to her life, Sherald still makes herself available to younger artists in need of a mentor who can shed light on the inner workings of the art world and market. Her easy manner may be partly due to being raised in the south of the US. Or maybe it’s her avid embrace of non-New York City living, a puncturing of shallow requirements for being a “real” artist. Or it might be that Sherald’s just a “giver”, a role she says comes naturally but also one she’s been placed into during various family and personal emergencies. Northern Renaissance Portraiture Paintings that were created between the 15th and 17th Centuries, during the Renaissance period where artists painted complex details of their subject. The World We Make', is a meditation on, as Sherald says, the fact that 'as we walk beyond what we have been

Her biggest adjustment has been managing her burgeoning celebrity status. “I‘ve learned to have a public persona,” Sherald says. “It’s not that it’s inauthentic. But I had to learn how to be in public.” She believes in generosity and access, themes braided into all aspects of her life and work. So, if an autograph needed to be signed, she signed it. An admirer wanted a hug? An embrace was given. But that took its toll, especially given that she is “not really an outgoing person, per se”. Floods of social demands, combined with a deluge of public events, proved exhausting. “I would get a migraine for two days because that kind of extroversion to an introvert is like physical exhaustion,” says Sherald. My eyes search for people who are and who have the kind of light that provides the present and the future with hope.’ The painting ‘Kingdom’ (2022), showing a young child at the top of a slide, both asks us to look positively at future generations whilst reminding us of the transient nature of childhood and the vulnerabilities inherent to it. The title of the exhibition, ‘The World We Make’, is a meditation on, as Sherald says, the fact that ‘as we walk beyond what we have been living through, we have a world to remake’, a message that at once contains hope, while suggesting there is work to be done.reminding us of the transient nature of childhood and the vulnerabilities inherent to it. The title of the exhibition, Amy Sherald, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, Missouri, and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Arkansas (2018); Amy Sherald, moniquemeloche LES, New York (2017); Off The Chain: American Art Unfettered, Second Street Gallery, Charlottesville, Virginia (2015). Amy Sherald Group Exhibitions include: expressions of self-sovereignty in our communities, and how these expressions might carry into the future.

of themselves and the complexities of their interior lives, void of the constructs of race, gender, religion and living through, we have a world to remake', a message that at once contains hope, while suggesting there isas motorbikes and tractors and the peaceful juxtaposition of man and machine to engage with the currents Kara Walker (born 1969) is an American contemporary painter, silhouettist, printmaker, installation artist, filmmaker, and professor exploring race, gender, sexuality, violence and identity through her work.

possible by the sale of Sherald's portrait of Breonna Taylor made in 2020 to the Ford Foundation and theTravelling from the artist's major exhibition at Hauser & Wirth in London, her first solo show in Europe, a selection