Amy Sherald was born to be an artist, but that didn’t make it easy. She waited tables until she was 38 because the schedule accommodated her painting. She underwent a heart transplant at 39. Through it all, she emerged as one of the leading American painters of her generation, named last year as the first female winner of the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery’s prestigious Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition.

Sherald, a Georgia native now living in Baltimore, has seen her art evolve from autobiographical to more socially relevant, “exploring identity and the roles of race and gender in life-sized portraits.” She discusses her work and its inspirations in conjunction with The Outwin 2016: American Portraiture Today, an exhibition opening October 5 at Kansas City’s Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art.