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Al Barnes(1937-2015)Ducks in Flight
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Jelena James
Senior Specialist, Head of Sale

Claire Dettelbach
Cataloguer

Jewel Bernier
Cataloguer
Al Barnes (1937-2015)
signed 'BARNES' (lower right)
oil on Masonite
9 3/4 x 14 1/8 in. (24.8 x 35.8 cm)
Footnotes
N.B.
Al Barnes was one of the most well-known sporting and fishing artists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. He was born in Texas and spent his childhood immersed in the worlds of fishing, sailing, and boating along the southeastern coast, near Padre Island. He pursued a career in sporting and nautical painting, later working in the Bahamas and Caribbean. He was particularly interested in boats, fish, and birds, but no matter their subject, his paintings always took as their starting point the water itself: "My paintings usually originate with the thought, I need to paint some water. I have tried many times to start out with a subject, and paint around it, but it just doesn't work for me. I prefer to start out with the sea/landscape and see what appears in it along the way. Sometimes birds fly in, sometimes boats float in, sometimes both. That's what I like about marine art. Events happen at a slower pace... you have time to see them." (Al Barnes, Bonefish & Tarpon Trust, 2014).
The present work depicts not the turquoise, expansive waters of the Caribbean but rather a subject much closer to home for Barnes: the quiet marshes of Texas. A flock of ducks - perhaps canvasback or redhead ducks, which prefer to nest in isolated marshland - bursts into the air, seemingly disturbed by the very gaze of the viewer. The overcast sky and hazy grey water mirror each other, broken only by the dry grasses and thinly painted hills on the horizon.
























