Amy Sherald’s portrait of Michelle Obama, unveiled at the National Portrait Gallery in 2018, is both visually arresting and symbolically rich. One of the most talked-about modern portraits, the painting diverges from traditional realist portraiture, instead embracing Sherald’s signature style, most notably her use of grayscale skin tones. This stylistic choice strips away color to foreground form, expression, and identity, while also referencing 19th-century photographic traditions used to document African Americans with dignity and presence.

Though the skin is rendered in gray scale, Michelle Obama’s Black features are emphasized with care and reverence. Her strong bone structure, natural hair texture, and confident posture are all preserved and celebrated. This tension between a deliberately muted palette and the vibrancy of her presence forces the viewer to engage more deeply. It's not just about who she is, but what she represents.

Amy Sherald, portrait of Michelle Obama

Technically, the portrait is flat in its modeling, using minimal shadowing and subtle gradients. This intentional flatness recalls the traditions of folk and African American vernacular art, while also placing Sherald in conversation with modernist painters. The graphic, almost poster-like quality of the piece is enhanced by Michelle’s flowing, patterned dress, which dominates the composition and becomes a field of abstract geometry. Designed by American fashion designer Michelle Smith, the dress features a bold, black-and-white pattern inspired by Piet Mondrian—linking contemporary fashion, art history, and the First Lady’s cultural cachet. The value of this portrait goes beyond its technique. It’s a cultural landmark. To see a Black woman, a First Lady, rendered with such individuality and softness—by a Black woman artist—is profoundly meaningful. It expands the canon of American portraiture and challenges viewers to rethink power, beauty, and representation. Sherald’s work doesn’t just capture Michelle Obama’s likeness, it captures the legacy she embodies. Quiet strength, intellectual elegance, and the unapologetic celebration of Black identity.

In Tending to You, Helena Foster invites us into a moment of unguarded tenderness—a quiet, almost sacred act of care rendered with arresting simplicity. The composition feels deeply personal, yet universal, evoking themes of nurture, intimacy, and the small rituals that bind us to one another. What makes Foster’s work so compelling is how she balances emotional depth with formal restraint.

Her palette is raw, but never harsh—muted earth tones, washed ochres, soft grays and dusty rose hues that seem to breathe rather than sit statically on the canvas. These colors create a warmth that is both vulnerable and grounded. There is a visceral honesty in her choices, as if each hue was selected not just for harmony, but for truth. Foster’s brushwork carries a quiet force. Her strokes are deliberate, even tender, echoing the subject matter in their care. There’s a painterly softness to the rendering, yet it’s underlined by a quiet confidence—a kind of gentle strength that mirrors the emotional weight of the scene.

Tending To You (2022)
Oil on linen
130 x 105 cm

The figures are simplified, almost blocky in their form, but never abstracted beyond recognition. They retain a profound human resonance, situated somewhere between memory and presence. There are clear lineages here, one might trace elements back to post-war British figuration, or the emotional immediacy of Alice Neel and the subdued power of early Lucian Freud. And yet, Foster’s voice feels wholly her own. Her work doesn’t shout; it doesn’t need to. It whispers, it holds, it tends—to the subject, and to the viewer.