User Agreement, Watercolor on watercolor paper with India ink caption on Bristol board
When was this piece created? 2021
What is the story behind this piece? I had been experimenting with watercolor as a medium for setting a mood, and wanted to explore what sort of story watercolor could tell in my gag cartooning practice.
What inspired this piece? Guess.
Is there an outside element that influenced this piece (i.e. another artist, nature, a novel, a theory, etc)? Modern life.
Explain/Tell us anything else you would like us to know about this specific work: Published (in black and white) in Funny Times, December 2021
What is one of your artistic goals? To use watercolor in the graphic novel I’m currently working on — again, as here, using color not only to convey a narrative but additional information such as mood.
Do you have any shows coming up? I currently have an ink wash political cartoon (with gag by California artist Les Toil) in the show “Forms of Resistance” at Cambridge College.
E.J. Barnes, Illustrator
Illustrator, cartoonist, animator, and sequential artist E. J. Barnes uses ink, watercolor, gouache, scratchboard, and digital media to tell stories and make humorous and sometimes poignant observations. Her gag cartoons have been published in various outlets, including Funny Times, Fortean Times, and The Journal of Irreproducible Results. Her illustrations have been used by periodicals, book publishers, commercial clients, and nonprofits.
Her sequential art has appeared in Colonial Comics: New England, 1620–1750; Boston Comics Roundtable anthologies Inbound #5, Hellbound #1, #2, and #5, and Boundless; and Ninth Art Press anthologies SubCultures and The Greatest of All Time Comics Anthology. Barnes also self-publishes some of her own comics as Drowned Town Press. Her comic books may be found at comic book specialty stores across the United States.
Barnes’s work has been selected for juried and invitational exhibitions in Massachusetts, Maryland, and Washington State. She has had solo exhibitions in Amherst, Greenfield, Sunderland, and Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her award-winning animated film, Leatherwing Bat, has been shown in film festivals across the United States, as well as in Canada and the Bahamas.
She has attended residencies at Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, Vermont (with fellowship); Culture and Arts Project NOASS in Rīga, Latvia; and at Annmarie Sculpture Garden and Arts Center’s Artists in Action program in Solomons, MD. Barnes is a graduate of Harvard University and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. She maintains her studio in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Website: www.ejbarnes.com
Facebook: E.J. Barnes