Light is easy to love. 2017

Amy Sherald’s painting is a masterclass in colour, depicting a girl with grey skin against a bright pink backdrop wearing a blue cherry-print sweater and white jeans. I wonder if Sherald was thinking about the way colour can shift and change depending on what it's next to when she made it. The pink kind of vibrates, doesn't it? It makes the blue even brighter and the red cherries pop. The grey skin is interesting too. It's not a color you see every day, and it makes you think about what skin color really means. Is it just a surface thing, or does it go deeper? The title, Light is easy to love, is such a sweet and tender thought and makes me consider how the way we represent others can be an act of care and attention. Painters learn from each other, riffing on ideas and pushing boundaries. Sherald does this so well, by asking us to be curious about color, representation, and what it means to be seen.