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The president is seated in and among not out front and center of a verdigris overgrowth of flowers.
Hes almost fighting for the stage that is already growing over him.
Real, insistent, a reminder or compass.
Its exactly the metaphysical place Obama embodied as president of all America.
I think the picture is true to the way Obama carries himself.
Hes still fighting for space.
True to Wileys style, the portrait is at once photo-realistic and madly decorative.
Almost too much to take in.
Not so the Obama painting.
A world emerges as well as a worldview.
Like the president, Wiley also had an absent African father and an American mother.
Then theres the portrait of Michelle Obama by Amy Sherald, 44, who lives in Baltimore.
An everyday queen of heaven.
She is grand, elegant, gorgeous, but her jackrabbit-quick wit is right there.
I know the kind of impact that will have on their lives because I was one of those girls.
*A version of this article appears in the February 19, 2018, issue of New York Magazine.
