If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it 2019

Amy Sherald made “If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it” with paint, building a world with shape and colour. The paint quality here is so smooth, so flat. There's no impasto or visible brushwork to distract us from the image. I'm drawn to the interplay between the figure and the structural beam, the tension between stillness and movement. The beam supports the figure, yet the title suggests the figure could surrender to the air, letting it carry him away. Look how Sherald uses flat, unmodulated colour to flatten the space. The sky is blue, but it’s a very particular blue. It gives the work a surreal, dreamlike quality, like a memory or a vision. Sherald's portraits often feature figures in moments of contemplation, inviting us to pause and consider their inner lives. It makes me think of Barkley L. Hendricks, another painter who celebrated Black figures in contemporary life. Both artists use realism in their work, but embrace abstraction and push it in strange new directions.