Publication date: August 17, 2021
Author and illustrator: Don Tate
This biography about the late athlete and artist Ernie Barnes is a fabulous window into an American success story. Ernest Barnes, Jr. was badly bullied in school for being different. He was not athletic in a time when athleticism in black boys was a way out of the ghetto. Instead, he loved to observe beauty and draw, but he also lived in a place where blacks were not allowed in museums. His mother, a domestic, worked for a lawyer who let young Ernie look through his art books in his library. In high school, a coach saw his sketchbook and encouraged him to get into bodybuilding which led to Barnes playing football in high school, college and the AFL. His art, which he was able to do after his early retirement, has a dynamic flow of bodies that comes from his observations and sketching while playing sports.
This is a new person for me and although he died in 2009, I got to meet him and his art for the first time through this children's book and spent hours reading articles about him and his pieces like "Sugar Shack" below.
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