The Make Believer 2016

Amy Sherald created this painting called, The Make Believer. The flat application of colour and clean, hard edges give the work a graphic quality which seems to embrace both the language of fine art portraiture and commercial illustration. Look at the muted, grey skin tone of the sitter against the bright, floral green of her dress. This contrast creates a visual pop, while the orange background hums with a quiet energy. The dress pattern itself is a maze of shapes and colours, somehow familiar but also unique. I particularly like the way that the pattern is bisected by vertical, soft white stripes. It reminds me a little of Barkley L. Hendricks' portraits from the 1970s. Both artists use a flattened picture plane and pared-down palette to focus on the figure. Sherald’s work seems to revel in the ambiguity of representation, inviting us to project our own meanings and experiences onto the canvas.