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Ernie Barnes
His Art and Inspiration, A Tribute to the Former NFL Player and Noted Artist

A tribute to former NFL player and artist Ernie Barnes, entitled "Ernie Barnes: His Art and Inspiration" opens to the public on October 23, 2007 in the Great Room at the Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle, 60th Street entrance. It will be on view through October 29, 2007. The core of the Tribute is an exhibition of twenty of Barnes’ most recent artworks, entitled "Liberating Humanity from Within", in which Barnes seeks to portray moments of transcendence in everyday life. A full-color catalog with an essay by William A. Fagaly of the New Orleans Museum of Art accompanies the exhibition.


The theme painting "An Inner Strength", acrylic on canvas, 36" x 48". ©2007 Ernie Barnes

The Tribute is co-sponsored by Time Warner Inc., the Time Warner Center and the National Football League. The Honorable Jack Kemp, Donna Brazile, Susan Taylor and Brig Owens are co-chairs of the Tribute. Brig Owens, also heads the Honorary Tribute Committee, which includes the Honorable John Conyers, Jr., June Kelly, Penny Fuller, Regis Philbin, Kanye West. Also included in the Committee is Renee Phillips, Director of Manhattan Arts International.

Ernest Eugene Barnes, Jr. was born in Durham, North Carolina. He attended North Carolina College (now North Carolina Central University), where he majored in fine arts, devoting considerable time to the study of the human figure. Using his own body as his model, he experimented with limits imposed by his body’s musculature. Later, he was able to enrich his artwork with these insights as well as those gained through his professional football experiences.

"Parting Ways" acrylic on canvas, 40" x 30". ©2007 Ernie Barnes

In 1960, Barnes was drafted into professional football by the Baltimore Colts as an offensive guard. He later played for the San Diego Chargers (where he and Jack Kemp were teammates) and the Denver Broncos, all the while sketching whenever he could. His work caught the eye of Sonny Werblin, owner of the New York Jets who later became his patron. After having Barnes’ work reviewed by critics, Werblin paid him the equivalent of his football salary to develop his skills as an artist full-time, and hosted Barnes’s first solo exhibition at New York’s Grand Central Art Galleries.

In 1984, Barnes was named Official Artist of the XXIII Olympiad. In 2004, the United States Sports Academy and the American Sport Art Museum & Archives named him “ America’s Best Painter of Sports.”

In the catalog essay, William A. Fagaly says, “it is not every day we find a former football player, an NFL star no less, who not only paints pictures but renders them with great power and originality. But then, Ernie Barnes is not your everyday athlete or artist. Those twin passions in his life have been inexorably intertwined for decades, dating back to his sketches of football when he was a standout offensive lineman for the San Diego Chargers and Denver Broncos in the early 1960s. Since his retirement from football, his career as an artist has grown and Ernie Barnes has brought honor and distinction to his dual achievements in athletics and art”.

Fagaly further notes, ”In his artwork, Barnes has drawn inspiration from the Italian Renaissance and the Baroque period… In The Competitive Spirit, Barnes’s composition strongly echoes El Greco’s 1577 ‘The Holy Trinity’ and his elongated figures relate to the long, sinuous figures of El Greco and the Italian Mannerists.” Barnes’s work, says Fagaly, “also reflects the social realism of his mentor, Charles White, who portrayed the African-American experience, and shows an affinity with the portrayals of the American scene by Reginald Marsh, Thomas Hart Benton, George Bellows and Paul Cadmus”.

The symbolic beauty and impact of "An Inner Strength", the theme painting of "Liberating Humanity from Within", according to Fagaly “presents a blooming thistle growing through the seams of concrete pavement, suggesting a metaphor for the triumph of determination, hope and perseverance over seemingly insurmountable adversity.”

“In this exhibition, as in all his works,” Fagaly concludes, “Barnes presents a highly singular personal vision of the physical and spiritual battles we all wage on the playing fields and on life’s stage…”

Ernie Barnes resides in Studio City, California. His works are in numerous private and public collections.

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