BY NELL STUNDELL

Whether admired as a fierce competitor on the football field or for his keen ability to paint dazzling images of the human form, Ernie Barnes has always captivated the public with his extraordinary talent.

At a recent exhibition at the Time Warner Center in New York City (10/23/07) entitled “Ernie Barnes: His Art & Inspiration,” luminaries from all aspects of his life honored the former athlete who spent five seasons playing in the National Football League.

“Though he was born in North Carolina, Barnes’ creativity and versatility are quintessentially New York, and we are proud to see him receive this much deserved recognition,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg wrote in a letter paying homage to the artist. (Photo by Luz )

Brig Owens, Barnes’ close friend and former NFL defensive back who helped lead the Washington Redskins to the Super Bowl VII Championship in 1972, told the receptive crowd, “It took a lot of courage for a young boy coming out of the segregated south in the 1940’s to pursue his dream of becoming an artist. Ernie did that against a lot of odds.” The proud owner of Barnes’ sports motivational painting “Buffalo Soldiers,” a title honoring the first African-American peacetime regiment in U.S. history, along with two other works, Owens explained that “many first knew the artwork of Ernie Barnes through the 70’s TV show ‘Good Times’ and through the album covers of Marvin Gaye and others.”

Mike Haynes, former Oakland Raider defensive back, shared Owens’ admiration. “I grew up on his art, watching ‘Good Times.’ I used to say, I want to draw like that. His artwork speaks a thousand words.”

A Californian for more than 40 years, Ernest Eugene “Ernie” Barnes, Jr., 69, conceded that a portion of his heart remains in Durham, North Carolina, where he was born and raised. It was where his mother worked as a maid, at the home of a prominent attorney, Frank Fuller, Jr., that Barnes was introduced to art.

“I could not go to a museum when I was a kid; the city was segregated,” Barnes said. “Mr. Fuller made it easy for us to have a nice lifestyle by providing things that we would not have had without his help.”

By the time he reached adolescence, Barnes had embraced the 16th century “mannerist” style of painting because he liked the distortion of scale and perspective, and, as time passed, the “genre” technique that would ultimately forge his figurative style of painting.

“I see art in terms of a definition referring to a class of things that could be looked at. I see it as a complete form and characteristic of humankind, an expression of my inner spiritual life,” Barnes explained. “It is a personal aesthetic journey within that gives form and shape to our lives. My purpose is to try and reinvent it with meaning and potency, so it becomes a way to raise consciousness.”

After landing on the junior varsity football team, Barnes was apprehensive about playing but decided that being an athlete would attract girls. He opted out of playing varsity football but once again, fate intervened.

In a biographical essay, William A. Fagaly described Barnes’ account of arriving home from school one day and seeing the coach and captain of the football team sitting at the dinner table eating chicken. “The Coach wiped his mouth and knelt in prayer with the Captain and mama. Coach then made a contribution to Mama’s missionary fun and, the very next day, I was number 73.”

Barnes attended North Carolina Central University on a football scholarship—one of 26 offered to him—and graduated with a degree in fine arts.

Drafted by the Baltimore Colts in the tenth round to play offensive guard for $6,500 a year plus a bonus, he accepted the Colts’ invitation to see their 1958 Championship Game against the Giants, but had no idea that it would inspire him to paint his first major work, “The Bench.”

“Created after I signed my contract to play professional football, ‘The Bench’ shows the angle I had from the stands behind the Colts’ bench. It turned out to be the only painting my college art instructor said, ‘Don’t ever touch it, it’s perfect.’”

Highly coveted by numerous NFL alumni, ‘The Bench’ remains in Barnes’ possession. Would he ever consider selling it? Barnes laughed, “I haven’t thus far. I have it over my fireplace.”

For four more seasons, Barnes played professional football for the San Diego Chargers and Denver Broncos, retiring in 1965. Few fans knew of his creative ability until the Chargers publicity director commissioned him to sketch portraits of his teammates for the game programs, resulting in an appearance on Regis Philbin’s first talk show.

“The publicity guy from the Chargers,” Philbin recalled, “told me, ‘We’ve got a football player here who’s also an artist.’ He said that Ernie was doing work at the local WMCA. I drove up with my cameraman. We got out of the car and I heard somebody saying, “Right, left, right, left. There was Ernie Barnes—teaching these kids, pretty tough kids—but they were all focusing on what he was saying.  I always remembered what Ernie said: ‘First we teach them discipline, then we’re gonna have some fun.’”

During his football career, Barnes protected Charger quarterback and former vice presidential candidate the Honorable Jack Kemp, from being pummeled on the field, and duly amazed his teammate with his artistic talent.

“The most admired quality in an artist,” Kemp said, “ is the courage to ignore the vogue of the day and possess the integrity to be true to one’s self. Ernie went into art because he was inspired by a storm.”

“It was during my last year with the Denver Broncos,” Barnes said, “when the artist in me was coming alive and I was starting to hate the game that I loved because there was no emotional reward for being on a losing team. The day before there had been a storm. The sun started to break through the white puffy clouds in the sky. When I turned, there was a fight. Immediately, my mind went back to art books, the study of art history, paintings of war scenes. The sun hitting the unmuddied parts of the uniforms created a yellowish white, it was just gorgeous. I knew then it was time for me to get out of the game.”

Initially, life after football was not so lucrative. Barnes struggled but never stopped developing his art.

A newspaper article that featured a letter written by Van Gogh to his brother Theo inspired Barnes to contact San Diego Charger owner Barron Hilton with the idea of becoming the Official Artist for the American Football League. Hilton suggested he make a presentation to the AFL team owners that culminated with Barnes receiving the honor. New York Jets owner David “Sonny” Werblin was so taken by Barnes’ talent that he decided to become a patron of the arts, inviting Barnes to New York for his first solo exhibition, at the Grand Central Art Galleries.

“The physicality of professional football seems incongruous to aesthetics,” Barnes acknowledged, “but there is a beauty of form and grace. The Greeks knew it with their renowned discus thrower. For me, it was the day that Sonny Werblin retired me from the game and paid me my salary for one season to stay home and develop my skills as an artist. Today I don’t think something like that would happen.”

Though well on his way with solo exhibitions throughout America, it wasn’t until Norman Lear, the television writer/producer commissioned him to create original art for the 1970’s CBS hit television series “Good Times”—particularly his distinctive “Sugar Shack”—that Barnes was thrust into the public eye as a voice for African-American life.

In 1984, the same year he married the love of his life, Bernadine “Bernie” Gradney, Barnes was appointed Official Artist of the XXIII Olympiad, in Los Angeles. Over the years, he has received numerous honors, commissions, and honors, and today is recognized as one of the finest American Neo-Mannerist figurative artists of his time.

Former Giants linebacker Brandon Short, who attended the TimeWarner exhibition, concurred. “I just discovered Ernie’s artwork online and thought I’d come out and honor him. I had no idea his art was so amazing and dramatic.”

Broncos’ player Floyd Little, one of the NFL’s all-time rushers and owner of several Barnes’ original pieces, added a humorous footnote, “Ernie wrote his autobiography, From Pads to Palette, and I wrote one last year called From the Broncos Sidelines,” chuckled Little. “I sent Ernie a copy and I keep asking him, ‘Have you read it yet, or are you waiting for the DVD?’”

When defining a parallel between a brushstroke and the pure physicality of an athlete, Barnes explained that he educated his senses to movement as a result of the game, that football revealed a foundation of wisdom about life. “From a creative point of view, it’s an introspective journey from within—it’s thinking with your soul and becoming spiritually intelligent,” he said. “I can recall many times standing before the canvas crying because I could not make a brushstroke. It took commitment and removing self-imposed limitations which happened over a period of time.”

Asked if his work had increased in value, Barnes laughed, “My God, yes! I sold my first painting for $350.” Kanye West, the rapper and record producer commissioned Barnes to paint “A Life Restored,” based on West’s near death experience, a work that took Barnes a year to complete and earned him substantially more than the total of his NFL salary.

But it is his painting “An Inner Strength,” a depiction of a forlorn young man sitting on a sidewalk who miraculously discovers a twig sprouting from a crack in the pavement, that possesses the spirit of the artist who created it. “The title is suggesting a metaphor of determination, hope and perseverance over the seemingly endless amount of adversity,” Barnes said. The painting’s accompanying statement reads, “Even if the world was encased in cement, a seedling will find substance from the sweat of its will to become a flower through the crack in the cement.”