The subjects of Amy Sherald s paintings have skin the color of charcoal an overcast hue that exists outside the spectrum of race as we often categorize it. The grey tone, made from a combination of black and Naples yellow, transforms Sheralds models from humans to mythical beings, embodying racialized physical attributes while rejecting the primary signifier of race ones flesh.

It was an aesthetic decision at first, Sherald explained to The Huffington Post. I thought visually it looked fantastic.

Only later did the decision illuminate a certain freedom. Painting figures with impossibly colored flesh allowed her to explore the stories that had never been told, with subjects both real and imagined and sometimes both who diverged from the overarching historical narrative of blackness.

These paintings originated as a creation of a fairytale, she explains in a statement online , illustrating an alternate existence in response to a dominant narrative of black history.