American artist Barkley L. Hendricks treats everyday style as dignity and portraiture as recognition. By isolating two Black women, identified as Susan (left) and Toni (right), on a gray, monochrome field, he turns the smallest choices like cap brim, belt buckle, and bracelet glint into signals of agency and self-definition. Susan and Toni stand side by side against a deep, nearly solid dark background that makes their clothing and skin tones feel luminous. Susan, a dark-brown–skinned woman with a calm, steady expression, wears a pale blue short-sleeve button-up shirt with an open collar and a matching light blue cap. Her dark jeans sit high at the waist, held by a belt. Her stance is relaxed, with one hand in a pocket, and she wears bright white shoes. Toni, also dark-brown–skinned, faces forward with a direct, composed gaze. She wears a light green sleeveless top and a matching headscarf topped by a pair of round sunglasses. Her high-waisted dark jeans echo Susan’s, and she wears white shoes as well. Jewelry like rings, a bracelet, a watch, and earrings are painted with crisp precision, emphasizing texture such as metal catching light, fabric seams, and the subtle sheen of denim. The women feel life-size and present, their bodies upright and self-possessed, with no surrounding scene to distract from their shared presence. The work is also unusual for Hendricks as a double portrait with two people sharing the frame without hierarchy, held together by rhythm (matching jeans, repeated whites, and parallel stances) while remaining distinctly themselves. Painted in the 1970s, when Hendricks was refining his life-size portraits of Black sitters, the picture pushes back against the long absence of Black women from “official” painting traditions ... and without asking them to perform anything except being exactly who they are. The result is intimate and iconic at once for a portrait of relationship, presence, and the quiet power of being seen on one's own terms.
"Sisters (Susan and Toni)" by Barkley L. Hendricks (American) - Oil and acrylic on canvas / 1977 - Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (Richmond, Virginia) #WomenInArt #BarkleyLHendricks #Hendricks #BarkleyHendricks #art #artText #BlackArt #BlackArtist #AfricanAmericanArt #VMFA #VirginiaMuseumofFineArts
