Five In Red 1970

Ernie Barnes made this painting, Five In Red, using earth tones and reds to depict a huddle of sportsmen. I can imagine Barnes building this scene, with it's shifting and emerging forms, through error, trial, and a lot of intuition. I really sympathise with him because it's kind of like the basketball players are leaning in to each other, and you can't really tell where one begins and the other ends. He must have been thinking of their intertwined fate as sportsmen. The paint is thin, but the texture is built up by the layering of colors. Look at that hand right in the center. The skin tones are built up with so much detail, the artist must have been looking hard. Barnes's handling of the medium puts me in mind of other painters like Alice Neel, who find something so emotionally raw and full of feeling. Artists are in an ongoing conversation, inspiring each other's creativity across time and space. Painting embraces ambiguity, it's a way of capturing what's in your heart.