A native of Little Rock, Arkansas, Ted Barnes received his M.F.A. in Painting from the University of Arkansas in 1979, he received his M.A. in Art Education in 1977 from Western Kentucky University and his B.A. in Studio Art from Ouachita Baptist University in 1972. He began his teaching career at Campbellsville College in 1979 and for thirty-nine years he was a teacher and administrator at Ouachita Baptist University, Louisiana College, Georgetown College and the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor. He retired as the Dean of the College of Visual and Performing Arts and Professor of Visual Art at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor in May 2018. In 1994 he was a visiting scholar in art at Regent’s Park College, Oxford University, Oxford, England.
He is an active visual artist and has exhibited in more than eighty solo and group exhibitions, both regionally and nationally. He lives in Hot Springs Village, Arkansas.
When he finds the time, he performs with a classic rock band from Alexandria, LA, “The Geezers.”
ARTIST'S STATEMENT
My artwork is devoted to searching for spiritual “Truth” in the midst of mystery and paradox. In essence, it is about exploring human contradiction, an investigation into intuition and logic, emotion and reason, faith and knowledge, religion and science, myth and reality, and abstraction and representation. Even though the imagery doesn't usually seem spiritually inspired at first glance, its intent is to address and examine the issues involved in the relationship between my Southern heritage and personal faith, and the puzzle this seems to encounter. I am also interested in formal concerns about contemporary painting/drawing and I explicitly and deliberately use popular cultural images as an inherent part of my research and artistic expression.