🖌️🎨 Tom Barnes - American artist

 🖌️🎨 Tom Barnes - American artist
Born in High Point, North Carolina, he grew up in the pine forests and coastal plains of southern Georgia.
In the early fifties, growing up among the alligators, mosquitoes, and bourbon of southern Georgia, Tom dutifully took the train to Savannah each summer to spend two weeks with his twin aunts, Lila and Bess.
The two sisters insisted on taking the bus downtown every Thursday to shop, dine out, and maybe see a movie. Early in the morning, there would be a long discussion about what to wear. Perfectly coordinated in salmon, pink, baby blue, mint green or lemon yellow, the two ladies set out carrying bus tokens in their handbags and wearing flowered hats (always flowers), gloves, costume jewelry and pumps to match their outfits. The scents that wafted about them were thick: magnolia, lilac and oleander.
Visits to shops such as Adler's, Fine's and Levy's were preceded by lunch at Morrison's, which always ended with steaming hot coffee and coconut custard pie from Anton's.
Wandering through the "city of parks," the three often found themselves at Telfair Academy, the only art museum Tom had ever seen before he was 16.
A combination of femininity expressed by two mature ladies, the museum's intoxicating paintings and statues, and a God-given, special aesthetic taste for artistic objects - all this comes together in the paintings with the "long-necked ladies" that have become Barnes' signature.
The poses of the models express the widest range of feminine emotions. Layers upon layers of lustrous transparent watercolors in gambouge, Prussian, grass green, Azreelian crimson, ochre and vermilion create rich, lush color... and a touch of 14-karat gold gives these objects of decorative art a shine that warms the heart and reminds us of a long-gone era...
In 1990, Tom left the corporate business and began painting on his own. Self-taught, he works primarily in watercolor. His floral compositions are almost always abstract forms with the same intense color rendition of his figures... but the movement of a passing wind adds a touch of excitement.
Likewise, his landscapes reflect the Fauvist technique and are stylized with mountains, hills, plains and lush foliage.
Tom's still lifes usually feature a chair, a table, a window, a jar and simple pieces of fruit... they always capture a moment of peace and reflection, interrupted by something unknown.

Sources: artfestival; Pinterest; tombarnesfineart.