Sedrick Huckaby received his BFA from Boston University in 1997 and his MFA from Yale University 1999. At that time he was awarded a fellowship that allowed him to travel internationally to study European Old Master paintings.
The artist has said that he chooses people he knows as subjects for his portraits because he is from a long line of quilters, and the storytelling of that tradition blends with feelings about his close-knit family. Both his own art and the artistic traditions of his family connect people over time and space. By making his portraits of ordinary people on a monumental scale, the artist no only celebrates their facial features but also sends the message everyone is of equal importance. Huckaby not only references these larger social themes in his work, he also connects his painting to the history of art. A 2006 painting, Letitia and the Rising Sun, depicts his wife and their first-born son in a Madonna and Child composition, linking his own life and experience to one of the most recognized and enduring symbols of Western art.
Huckaby calls his medium "relief painting,"a mix of impasto (thickly applied paint that builds up on the surface of the canvas) and thinly applied paint. This can be seen clearly in Enocio where the sitters facial features are constructed from mounds of oil paint, giving the work the feeling of a sculptural relief. "Originally, I was attracted to the perceptual effect of thickly-encrusted paintings," Huckaby observed. "The goal is to intertwine the actual form and the image in a seamless fashion, acting as both a painting and a relief."

---