Ernie Barnes - Quotes

Quotes

“An artist paints his own reality.”

“The artist uses creative visualization and the athlete uses the same thing... It’s the muscle of the mind, that’s the main muscle.”

“I am bound by the strongest ties with the organic life of all people. And being an artist has created in me the desire to continually affirm beauty.”

“The five years I lived in (the Fairfax district) a Los Angeles Jewish community led me to learn of their unyielding spiritual strength and internal sense of grandeur. I met people who had survived a hard school of struggle.”

“My early paintings have all the rawness and passion of the (football) game.”

“I was angry. I wanted to show and tell people what I had seen and felt. I wanted to show the dehumanization that is professional football. My only expression is through art. I painted until I had exhausted the hate. I had so many ideas that I couldn’t put a canvas up quick enough.”

“One day on the playing field, I looked up and the sun was breaking through the clouds, hitting the unmuddied areas on the uniforms, and I said, ‘that’s beautiful!’ I knew then that it was all over being a player. I was more interested in art. So I traded my cleats for canvas, my bruises for brushes, and put all the violence and power I had felt on the field into my paintings.”

“Throughout my five seasons in the NFL, I remained at the deepest level of my being...an artist.”