Black Lives Teach Us To Hope

February 9, 2022 – Michelle Obama

Amy Sherald, Official First Lady Portrait

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For this week, in honor of Black History Month, I’m sharing portraits of iconic and famous Black women whose lives have given me every reason to hope. 

Peace & Blessings,
Marcie Alvis-Walker

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INVOCATION

Spirit, fill us with such an audacious courage that hopes for more and better.

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MICHELLE OBAMA: IN HER OWN WORDS – A LESSON ON BECOMING

For me, becoming isn’t about arriving somewhere or achieving a certain aim. I see it instead as forward motion, a means of evolving, a way to reach continuously toward a better self. The journey doesn’t end.

So far in my life, I’ve been a lawyer. I’ve been a vice president at a hospital and the director of a nonprofit that helps young people build meaningful careers. I’ve been a working-class black student at a fancy mostly white college. I’ve been the only woman, the only African American, in all sorts of rooms. I’ve been a bride, a stressed-out new mother, a daughter torn up by grief. And until recently, I was the First Lady of the United States of America—a job that’s not officially a job, but that nonetheless has given me a platform like nothing I could have imagined. It challenged me and humbled me, lifted me up and shrank me down, sometimes all at once. I’m just beginning to process what took place over these last years—from the moment in 2006 when my husband first started talking about running for president to the cold morning this winter when I climbed into a limo with Melania Trump, accompanying her to her husband’s inauguration. It’s been quite a ride.

Becoming requires equal parts patience and rigor. Becoming is never giving up on the idea that there’s more growing to be done… Do we settle for the world as it is, or do we work for the world as it should be?

You may live in the world as it is, but you can still work to create the world as it should be…Your story is what you have, what you will always have. It is something to own.

There’s a power in allowing yourself to be known and heard, in owning your unique story, in using your authentic voice. And there’s a grace in being willing to know and hear others…

For every door that’s been opened to me, I’ve tried to open my door to others. And here is what I have to say, finally: Let’s invite one another in. Maybe then we can begin to fear less, to make fewer wrong assumptions, to let go of the biases and stereotypes that unnecessarily divide us. Maybe we can better embrace the ways we are the same. It’s not about being perfect. It’s not about where you get yourself in the end. There’s power in allowing yourself to be known and heard, in owning your unique story, in using your authentic voice. And there’s grace in being willing to know and hear others. This, for me, is how we become.

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ARTIST STATEMENT

AMY SHERALD:

As a child I was very quiet. I always drew, or I was painting or looking at paintings in encyclopedias. I kept myself busy with pencil and paper all the time. Art is the thing that I knew I had to do with my life. The first time I went to a museum on a school field trip, I saw a painting of a black person. I remember standing there with my mouth open and just looking at it. I knew in that moment that I could do what I wanted to do.

I was diagnosed with congestive heart failure coming out of graduate school at 30 years old. They really didn’t know where it came from. I was running an eight-minute mile and had no idea that my heart was failing. Ten years later I received my transplant at 39. The decision that I made during those ten years was to focus solely on my art. People who don’t quit eventually rise to the top.

In March 2016, I found out that I won the National Portrait Gallery Competition. I remember giggling to myself because I complained about having to spend $50 on the application fee. I had to borrow money to get a dress from Rent the Runway and to get to D.C. It was one of those moments where you’re at the precipice and you’re about to fall over, and then all of a sudden something happens. It got my work seen.

I paint everyday people and want the images to be recognized as universal. For black viewers, it’s a place of rest and a place to receive love, to walk into a space like a museum and see an image of a person that looks like you looking back at you. People take for granted that not seeing yourself can lead you to not loving yourself.

I found out that Michelle Obama chose me to paint her official portrait in September 2016. I tend to be like really stoic in times where everyone else is like, oh my god. I was like, alright, this is cool. I can do this. And then I had to forget about it, because it’s just a lot to carry around, having to make this painting basically for the world. I had moments when I was driving in my car and I would let myself feel it and cry a little bit. I joke around and I say I didn’t survive a heart transplant not to do this.

Working with Michelle Obama was really fun. There are people who don’t normally go to museums that are interested in art now. They are seeing themselves in different ways. That’s the most important part and focus for myself. Parker Curry, the little girl who went viral looking at the painting, thinks Michelle is a queen and that the National Portrait Gallery is her castle. She has a real, live person to look up to, versus a cartoon character. There’s a difference between fantasy and reality. Michelle Obama is reality. This painting is a first and she is a first. So it makes sense that that image doesn’t look like the other images, that it is as different as she is in the arc of history.

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BREATH MEDITATION FOR BECOMING

INHALE
I am still becoming…

EXHALE
Becoming…

INHALE
Reach…

EXHALE
Forward.

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BENEDICTION

Say Her Name: Michelle LauVaughn Robinson, Michelle Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, Forever First Lady– for she is worthy.

And you are worthy.

Selah