Seeing the ART in the Barnhart family

Laura Young
ECB Publishing, Inc.

The land at 68 Barnhart Rd. has been many things for the Barnhart family over the years. Dorothy Barnhart, sitting in front of her home on Feb. 21, recalled, “I guess when I was a child they had cotton from here to the road, and then a few years later they had corn. I guess when these kids came along we had watermelons for seed.”
On this day, however, the yard was full of row upon row of … paintings. Around 350 of them, her grandson Christopher Barnhart estimates. Chris had put out stakes with string and set up an outdoor art exhibition of oil paintings, watercolors, etchings and acrylics. The collection included mostly the artwork of his father, Cornelius “Neil” Barnhart, but also his own razor art along with works by his aunt, Neil's sister Kathryn Barnhart Austin, as well.
Nearly everyone in this family nowadays has shown some artistic talent, and Chris has recently moved back to Monticello from South Florida to showcase this art, inspire youth in the community and hopefully keep the artwork flowing from the next generation in his family.
Dorothy remembers when Neil was a child they might stretch out on mats in the yard with watermelons, reading stories and imagining what the clouds looked like. Neil would say what he saw and then draw it with his finger. Neil's interest in learning to illustrate books led him to take a Commercial Art class at Lively Technical College, and later he worked at Disney as a portrait artist. He's had exhibitions in Helen, Ga., and at the Tallahassee Airport gallery.
“Most of the time,” he said, “my art has been hidden. It's even been hidden from me.”
Now he and his son are working together to get the artwork shown more and have space to work with students.
Kathryn is joining them in this effort. She was born and raised in Monticello and still lives here. She “blames” Neil for sparking the love of art in her. It has been a part of her life throughout the career she had as an interpreter for deaf and hard-of-hearing students, along with her side job of performing as a clown with BJ's Party House in Tallahassee.
“As a child, Cornelius drew all the time, so he made me love art and drawing... I've been in love with art all my life. I do chalk drawings on the ground. I do balloon art, face painting, airbrush, acrylics, watercolor, clay molding. Anything that has to do with art, I love. I have 17 grandbabies, and all of them draw. We don't know where the art came from. It just started happening. All of my children draw, and all of his children draw. So, it's in there, but we just don't know where it came from.”
Chris was born in Orlando and raised in Monticello. He recalls how his photographic memory allowed him to finish schoolwork quickly and have more time to be creative. Most of his adult life he's worked in different cities, including Atlanta, Tampa, Jacksonville and Miami. He spent the last 24 years in South Florida, some of that time as a staff engineer in a hospital. The past four years, however, he's been devoted to artwork and enjoying widespread success with it.
“I do razor etchings,” said Chris. “My pieces start out on a black slate, and I use a razor to cut and scratch the image into it. So instead of adding to my canvas as most artists do, I work in a negative. As I etch it away, I go back and I flood it with ink, and I'll etch it and flood it, over and over and over, until I get the depth that you see. If you look closely you'll see that it's just a bunch of dots and scratches.”
Chris makes his living now selling his artwork through razorartwork.com, which features some of Neil's artwork as well. One of well-known pieces, “Infinity,” is a large face embedded with symbols.
“Every inch of that face shows an actual researchable meaning... for example, a hand holding a spear, the heavens, drums, a garden, all seven continents, the world in chaos in its present state.”
When Chris recently moved back to Monticello after traveling around the world with his art, he started working with his family on ways to showcase their art, starting with the huge outdoor exhibit at his grandmother's home this February.
“Having the opportunity to come back and do something like this has been really incredible,” he said. “My dad has amassed such an incredible collection of art, and I would love to find us a museum or gallery or somewhere to feature such an incredible body of work. It would be great to have the opportunity, even to reach out to the kids too, and inspire the youth to come out and continue art. I can't imagine where I'd be without the arts myself. It's done some really incredible things for me. So if I could inspire the next generation to pick it up and keep going that would be incredible.”