Love it...Props to the MICA Alumni.
# BLackHisSToryMonth ...DOING YOU.

“SHAPIRO: Barack Obama helped with the unveiling of a painting by a New York-based artist Kehinde Wiley. The former president is depicted leaning forward in a chair against a lush background of thick, green leaves. Michelle Obama is also seated in her portrait, one hand across her lap, the other under her chin. The background is light-blue. She wears a sleeveless white dress with geometric patterns almost like a Mondrian painting with touches of red, yellow and pink. Her face, arms and hair are all in gray like a charcoal drawing. That's how Amy Sherald paints African-Americans, something that grabbed the first lady's attention before they even met.

OBAMA: I'd seen her work, and I was blown away by the boldness of her colors and the uniqueness of her subject matter. So I was wondering, who is this woman?

SHAPIRO: Well, she's 44. She lives in Baltimore. And until just a few years ago, she was supporting her art with a side job waiting tables. When I spoke with Amy Sherald this afternoon, I asked her about how she started painting the skin tones of her subjects in gray.

AMY SHERALD: After the invention of the camera when black families were finally able to photograph themselves in the ways that they wanted to be represented and I was able to look at those images and see myself in a way that was extricated from the dominant historical narrative - those are things that I thought about. And I think that when I looked around to see what work was being made and what conversations were being had amongst my contemporaries and, as a young artist, being influenced by American realism, I saw that there was a gap that I could fit myself into as a figurative painter. As a black woman and somebody who paints Americans, that narrative of images of us just being us were things that I wanted to see exist, you know, within the museum institutions.” black garments in formal occasion