Amy Sherald, the portraitist to Michelle Obama, is preparing for her New York debut.
IN 2012, WHEN AMY SHERALD was 39, she collapsed in a Baltimore Rite Aid. The artist had been diagnosed eight years earlier with idiopathic cardiomyopathy—a disease of the heart muscle that makes it difficult for the organ to pump blood—and had been told that she would need a heart transplant. At the time, it hadn’t seemed urgent. She was in great physical shape, training to compete in a triathlon, and she was about to get her M.F.A. from the Maryland Institute College of Art.
With a mile-wide smile and a warm hug, Sherald lets me into her Jersey City studio in Mana Contemporary, the two-million-square-foot former tobacco factory that’s now a hive of artist spaces. She introduces me to August Wilson, her Pekingese–Jack Russell: “He’s the perfect balance of a dog,” she says as she prepares him a plate of grain–and–gluten free dinner patties. “Most Jack Russells are a little neurotic, kind of hyper. But he’s really chill.
She recently moved to New Jersey, she explains, “for love.” Last September she began living with Kevin Pemberton, a Brooklyn-born hedge funder, in a house that’s a short drive from Mana Contemporary. A mutual friend introduced them ten years ago, but nothing clicked until last year. “I hated to leave Baltimore, because my heart is there,” she says. “But his career is not portable.” They go out a lot—Kevin likes to try new restaurants.
She was introduced to art through the family’s encyclopedia, where she would study reproduced paintings. At school, she was the only black kid in her class, and she stayed at her desk during recess because she liked to draw in a quiet room. She took private lessons from her school art teacher straight through to 12th grade. But when she announced that she wanted to be an artist, both her parents balked—they wanted her to be a doctor.
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