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♪ soft uplifting music ♪

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♪ ethereal ambient music ♪

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[Amy Sherald] I really have this deep belief that
images can change the world

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it's not that I started making work with
that belief but it's what I've come to

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know

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♪♪♪

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It's a beautiful way to tell a story

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♪♪♪

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I consider myself an American realist

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For me it means just recognizing my Americanness first,

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and just wanting the
work to join a greater ongoing conversation.

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Edward Hopper or Andy Wyeth
they're telling these American stories

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and I'm also telling American stories

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♪♪♪

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[Man Announcer] Miss Amy Sherald, portrait artist.

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[Woman Announcer] Last week, Amy
Sherald went from being a
virtual unknown

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to one of the most talked about artists in the world

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On Monday, her painting of Michelle Obama

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was unveiled alongside Kehinde Wiley's
portrait of President Barack Obama

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Both Sherald and Wiley were interviewed and
chosen for the job

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by the Obamas themselves...

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[Amy] I wanted to paint a quiet and Powerful portrait of her that

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offered the viewer
a different kind of moment.

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♪ sensitive piano music ♪

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And make it truly about 
her and not about

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the "First Lady" title.

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And making everyone feel the way
that she makes people feel in person,

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which is like she's very relatable.

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When they look at Michelle, they can see themselves.

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By being herself, she gives
us permission to be our full selves.

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♪♪♪

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It just so happens that painting Black people

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is kind of political.

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But these figures
hanging on museum walls,

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it's more than just that;

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you know, it's more than
just the corrective narrative.

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It's gotta be about humanity first, and then everything else has to follow.

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♪♪♪

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The decision to paint the skin in gray,
when I first started making this work

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I think I had an anxiety about
the work being marginalized

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and the conversation solely being about identity.

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This was something that I wasn't
trying to escape necessarily,

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but I wanted the work
to be bigger than that.

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I started to think of it as a way to allow the viewer to have

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an experience that was not about race first.

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These paintings, for me, are
really about our interior lives.

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[birds chirping]
[sprinkler ticking]

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[Geraldine] Well, this is Amy. It's not a large
one, but that's Amy,

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and I'm trying to think
of her age at the time.

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[Amy] Six or seven,
maybe second grade.

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And then this is
all of my siblings.

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[Geraldine] Yeah,
Amy was the bossy one.

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[laughter]

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[Amy] That's funny.

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[Geraldine] She wanted to be an
artist and, of course,

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I would always say, "I
don't want a starving artist.

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You can be a doctor, a lawyer,
anything better than an artist.

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Do your art on the side."

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But she was
determined to be an artist.

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[Amy] Yeah, and this is my
mom when she was 19.

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[Geraldine] High school.

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♪ sensitive piano music ♪

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Having these here for me was
the opportunity to understand my

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history and where I come from.

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And after using the
gray scale painting,

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I really started to think about
these images that I had growing up.

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♪♪♪

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I was always drawn to the
photograph of my grandmother, Jewel

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I just think photographs from this time,

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that eyes really tell a story like you
can really feel who they were in that

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moment, and I think that's what really
draws me to black and white photography

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is because it's so special and saturated
with so much emotional energy.

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Looking at her picture, I
saw a woman who was dignified, who represented herself

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in a way that influenced how I wanted 
to be represented in the world as well.

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I don't think I realized that I was missing 
seeing imagery of myself in art history.

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It wasn't until I came across
a painting that actually had a person of

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color in it — a Black person — that I
realized that

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I had never seen that before.

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♪♪♪

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As a sixth grader, my
first time going to a museum,

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when I saw this
painting by Bo Bartlett,

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I was shocked that I was looking
at a figure of a Black man.

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He was standing in
front of a house,

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he had on a belt that had,
like, some handyman stuff.

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I just remember standing
there for a few minutes,

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and I realized when I saw that work 
that I wanted to make paintings like that.

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I was able to see my
future in that moment.

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So this is my childhood bedroom,
and it's pretty much exactly as I left it

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when I moved to Atlanta to go to 
Clark Atlanta University.

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I didn't have the kind of mom that, like,

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let us put posters up in
our room or anything like that;

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like, everything had to be just
like this when I left to go to school.

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♪ smooth jazzy music ♪

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I waited tables from the time I was 25
until I was about 37.

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♪♪♪

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I kept painting.

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I was trying to figure out where
I fit in and what my voice would be,

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and in my mind I was like, "Well, I don't 
see just paintings of Black people just being Black."

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Like, we're just here,
we're living our lives,

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hanging out, just
being ourselves.

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♪♪♪

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Post grad school, I run
into this model who was, like,

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a six-one,
young Black woman,

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and I asked her if she would
come and allow me to take a picture of her.

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She had on a pink shirt that had
white polka dots on it and a big bow tie.

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She's standing there with her
arms dropped down to her side,

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her gaze meeting the viewer,
and she looks a little bit

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uncomfortable, a
little bit awkward.

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She, in that moment,
stood there as, like,

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everything that
I wanted to represent.

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She was fully herself in this
out-of-the-box kind of way.

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That painting was a seminal
piece for me because it really

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solidified in my mind,
like, what exactly I was doing.

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I wanted to make images
that told stories like this.

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I started finding the
models that I wanted to find,

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creating these different
narratives and scenarios that

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wanted to see
exist in the world.

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♪♪♪

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[Amy] Hi, guys!

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— Hi!

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— How are you?

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Very nice to meet you.

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[Amy] Nice to meet you.
— Nice to meet you too.

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[Amy] Oh...

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[Amy] Hi.
— Hi, very nice to meet you.

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[Amy] Nice to meet you.
Thank you for doing this.

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[Amy] You're a medium?

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— Yep, yes.

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[Amy] All right,
let's head down.

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I just gotta get a visual of
what this is gonna look like.

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I kinda...

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My process is that I find
the painting, like...

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You know, we're gonna do
a lot of different poses.

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— Cool.

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[Amy] Let's give it a
shot and see how it goes.

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— Like this?

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And then just like that.

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[Amy] Yup.

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And then move this foot up
just a couple of inches.

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— I did.
[Amy] Oh, there we go.

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[beep]

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Okay, Raj, look
at him in his eyes.

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[beep]
[camera snap]

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♪ curious ambient music ♪

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Photography is the
beginning of the painting.

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It's how I begin to search
for what I want in the work.

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I let the models feel their
way through what's happening,

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and then each pose,
I try to

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adjust to find exactly what I'm
looking for,

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what the painting is going to be like.

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What is it going to feel like?

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Are the colors right?
Are positions right?

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— All right, we're shooting.

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I rely on the organic in my work; like, I try not to over-plan,

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I just go in with my antennas up, looking for the right moments

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and waiting for that synergy to build between the models.

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And I leave the photo session with 
exactly the image that I'm going to work

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with, so it's almost like it's my
sketchbook.

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— That's amazing.

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That's good.

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[laughter]

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— This is perfect 'cause
the way your noses are, everything is great.

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♪♪♪

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[Amy] I have been looking at a lot of
photographs of iconic American moments

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and reconsidering them and reimagining them.

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And so I came across the
image from the V Day kiss,

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and then I thought, "It would
be wonderful if I could recreate

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this image but with two men."

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When I think about who's going
to be represented in my work,

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I think it speaks to the moment.

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[Woman Newscaster] This morning, the
family of a Kentucky woman shot

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and killed by police
is demanding answers,

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filing a wrongful death
lawsuit against three officers,

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Breonna Taylor's family claiming
officers blindly fired more than

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20 shots into her apartment two months ago.

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On March 13th, three
officers entered...

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[Amy] Breonna Taylor was
an all-American girl from an

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all-American family.

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Her mom told me that she was a
girly girl

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and she liked to get dressed up.

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And it was really heartbreaking
for me to realize that it was

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also a love story,

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that her boyfriend at the time
was going to propose to her,

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like, within weeks
of that happening,

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so then I wanted to
include the engagement ring.

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And all of these things clued me
in to how I felt like she would

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possibly want to be represented
on the cover of a magazine.

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♪ emotional music ♪

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I painted it for her family so that when 
they look at this image,

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they see the whole story.

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I think that we deserved a
whole picture of her life.

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After the cover came out, the
work was co-acquired by her

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hometown museum,
which is The Speed,

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but then also the Smithsonian
African-American Museum of History and Culture.

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I thought that it was important
for it to be in line-of-sight of the

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government in Washington DC.

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I just started having the space
to make paintings this large.

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It's a dream come true; it's the
dream that I had when I was in high school

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when I realized that artists had big
studios and made huge paintings.

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Sometimes, it feels surreal to
walk in here and just see the work

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that I've made and see
the work that I'm making.

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For most of my life, it was
something that I was striving for.

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♪ uplifting ethereal music ♪

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When I look back at my life,
it seems fairly orchestrated,

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these kind of moments
that push you forward.

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I just feel lucky that I
listened to my heart and

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listened to whatever
my intuition said;

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I was like, "I'm gonna do that."

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I was told by
somebody in my life,

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"Don't listen to criticism
and don't listen to praise.

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Just do what you do."

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♪♪♪

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♪ ethereal ambient music ♪