Study for Pause Café 1983

Ernie Barnes made this study for ‘Pause Café’ with what looks like watercolor and ink. You can see the under-drawing in pencil, the way he’s worked to build up the figure and the volumes. It’s like he’s thinking through paint! It feels so provisional, like he’s still figuring out the composition, the tonal balance, and the emotional tenor of the image. She seems tired, right? I wonder, when Barnes made this, was he thinking about the history of figurative painting? Maybe Degas’ dancers came to mind. There is a sense of melancholy in the brown monochrome palette, but also beauty in the way Barnes deploys a thin wash of color to shape the mood and the woman's form. It looks like he’s trying to capture her inner world, and that is a powerful, universal language. In many ways, painters are all in conversation with one another.