Born in High Point NC, Tom Barnes grew up in the pine forest and coastal plains of South Georgia. In the early fifties, raised amongst the gators, mosquitoes, and bourbon of South Georgia, Tom was dutifully packed off each summer, traveling by train to Savannah where he spent two weeks with the twins, Lila and Bess…

Stores like Adler's, Fine's, and Levy's preceded lunch at Morrisons, always topped off with steaming hot coffee and coconut custard pie from Anton's. Roaming around the "city of parks," the three often ended up in Telfair Academy, the only art museum Tom ever saw until he was 16.

The combination of femininity expressed by the two grand dames, the heady paintings and statues of the museum, and a gift from God for things artistic, all came together in the "long neck ladies" which have become Barnes' signatures.

Graduating from the University of Georgia in 1972 with degrees in Experimental Psychology and Philosophy and Religion, Tom met and married Gail Thompson of Guyton, Georgia. In Athens, Tom worked for Morris Communications as the Creative Services Director and Gail taught ballet.

 In 1990, Tom retired from the corporate business world and began to paint.
Self-taught, he works primarily in watercolors. Recently, the genre has changed to reflect his abiding passion with the Renaissance and his newfound love of the Pre-Raphaelitism. His florals almost always are abstracted forms with the same intense color rendering of his figures…but the added motion of a passing breeze adds yet another element of excitement. Likewise, his landscapes capture the techniques of the Fauvists and are stylized with mountains, hills, plains and lush foliage. His still life subject matter usually captures a chair, a table, a window, a jar and simple pieces of fruit…they always capture a moment of repose and reflection, interrupted by something unknown. Most all his work is on 140# Arches rough-press paper with Grumbacher Academy paints. His recent experiments on canvas debuted this June at Smith-Klein Gallery in Boulder.

Over the past ten years, his works have found their way into collections in Mexico, Bolivia, Germany, Japan, Switzerland, England, Nigeria and Spain as well as many east coast and mountain states cities.