Amy Sherald (1973 –  ) is an American artist who paints African Americans in ordinary, everyday and carefully curated settings. Miss Everything (Unsuppressed Deliverance) was a pivotal portrait for Sherald. It won the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition of the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian in 2016. It appeared on the cover of The New Yorker on March 24, 2025.

Sherald has written that this painting was inspired by Alice in Wonderland – thus the large teacup. It is a harmony of colors in figure and background and includes one of Amy Sherald’s most innovative aspects. Amy Sherald uses gray scale in place of skin tone. This is her painted challenge to color as race moving us beyond quick assignment of identities by this variable. Sherald erases skin tone to draw us into deeper consideration of the lives and personalities of her subjects. 

Amy Sherald is well known on two additional points. She painted the official portrait of Michelle Obama for the National Portrait Gallery in 2018. In 2025, she pulled her renowned exhibit, American Sublime, from the Smithsonian after she was asked to remove Trans Forming Liberty, an image of a transgender Statue of Liberty. She refused.

Amy Sherald speaks truth to power with color and brush. She moves her art into the wider culture and will not be censored by the limited perspectives of others, even members of the current administration. She pushes and pulls at our certainties. She helps us see to a far, unrestricted, honoring and loving horizon where our vision might just join God’s.

We give thanks for Amy Sherald. Amen.

In gratitude, faith and hope,