Sherald's reputation as a portrait painter is misleading. In fact, she almost always invents her subjects. The work begins with finding sitters...to support characters and stories of her own devising.
Her subjects, all Black, are friends, strangers, and, lately, people found through casting agents, whom she clothes and poses...then submits to hundreds of photographs.
At this point in her life – Sherald just turned 51 – she's delighted to rid myself of the critical self I grew up with, and to reconnect with her inner child.
Sherald's optimism is rare and sails against the winds of contemporary culture. It is evident in her current work. Both will be fully on view in Sherald's most comprehensive...
Her first triptych, Ecclesia (The Meeting of Inheritance and Horizons), evokes ecclesiastic architecture and perhaps figures looking out over water to their ancestors.
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