Opinion Columnists
Email
Print
The dual arts of Larry Barton
Political cartoonist and wildlife painter looked at life from both sides — and more
ADVERTISEMENT
Published: April 27, 2008
For almost 30 years before he died last Sunday at the age of 71, Larry Barton was a nationally acclaimed wildlife artist, working from the charming old farmhouse near Pfafftown where he lived with his wife, Jewell. But before he turned to painting full time, Larry Barton was a journalist — a political cartoonist — for 16 years. And for the last six years of that first career, before he left in November 1979, Barton worked for The Sentinel, then Winston-Salem's afternoon newspaper.
It might seem surprising that one man would turn his artistic skills to pursuits that seem, on the surface, so different. The sensitive wildlife artist in him loved the outdoors and nature. That Larry Barton would glean quiet lessons about life, the world and enduring truth and beauty from what he found in the deep woods or tidal marshes or even in his own backyard. Then, through watercolors or oil on canvas, he would translate those lessons into captivating pictures that spoke to everyone who saw them. Who is not touched by his image of a hungry cardinal hunting for food in a snowy footprint, or a bufflehead duck swimming underwater?
The other Larry Barton, the political cartoonist, cast his observant eyes on the hectic, noisy human world of politics and modern life in general. Then he used his quick wit and his deft pen to skewer the pompous and expose the absurdities he saw all around him in crisp, to-the-point, sometimes biting black-and-white cartoons. He cast his sharp eye on the foibles and misadventures of the great and the not-so-great, targeting President Richard Nixon or local school-board members with an equal lack of mercy.
These divergent careers did not seem so contradictory, however, to those of us who knew Larry. He was a man who embraced life, who was engaged and interested in so many things. He loved to talk, and a conversation with him could range from the tarpon he caught off Florida to the latest scandal in Washington or Raleigh. His keen blue eyes might twinkle as he recounted some outlandish tale about a hunting excursion with his twin brother, Jerry, when they were boys growing up in Michigan, and then they would flash with indignation when the subject changed to the outrageous behavior of some two-bit politician. While he was a fulltime cartoonist, he took refuge in hunting and fishing, and after he became a fulltime artist, he maintained a keen interest in current events.
Nor were those of us who knew him surprised at how good this gifted man was at both of his artistic careers. Whether drawing a caricature of Sen. Jesse Helms or painting an owl, he set about his work with passion and held himself to high standards.
Like many journalists of that era, Larry moved from newspaper to newspaper as he built his career. He worked at The Evansville Courier and Press in Indiana; The Blade in Toledo, Ohio; and The News & Observer in Raleigh before coming to work at The Sentinel. At one time, his syndicated cartoons ran in 33 newspapers. His work was published in The New York Times, The Washington Post and Time magazine, among other places. In 1968, he won the National Headliner Award for the most consistently outstanding editorial cartoons in a daily newspaper. Among the stacks of papers and memorabilia his family was going through last week were letters U.S. presidents wrote to Larry about his cartoons.
Larry achieved comparable levels of success when, having settled down in Forsyth County, he turned his hand to wildlife art. His works were used by such organizations as Ducks Unlimited. They appeared in Wildlife in North Carolina magazine, whose longtime editor, Jim Dean, told the Journal in 1989 that Larry was "one of the best wildlife artists in the nation." Like many successful wildlife artists, Dean said, Larry got the precise details right, but his formal training and innovative approach took his work to a level that an artist who did not particularly care about wildlife would appreciate. Barton won prestigious competitions to provide the official duck-hunting stamps for the state of New York in 1985 and for North Carolina in 1987.
There are obvious differences in wildlife paintings and political cartoons. One of the most striking became apparent to me last week when Jewell Barton let me browse through boxes of Larry's original cartoons.
A painting of a bluebird or an owl or a boy fishing will stand the test of time; future generations will understand and savor it as easily as did those who saw it before the paint was dry.
But the message of a political cartoon can be mighty fleeting. I lived through the news events that inspired Larry's cartoons for The Sentinel, but some of the drawings and punchlines left me baffled. Then there were those cartoons that I understood, but which would take a lot of explaining before a younger person would "get" them. Others tackle people or events so well known in history that anyone should understand them. And then there are those that are amusing largely because they remind us of how the "news" keeps repeating itself. There were cartoons from more than 30 years ago about do-nothing legislators, and about soaring electric bills, or the price of postage stamps going up to 13 cents, or gasoline heading for — gasp — a dollar a gallon.
Looking through 35-year-old editorial cartoons can be a sobering exercise, a reminder that many of the scandals and happenings we get so worked up about will quickly fade into insignificance. Maybe that realization is what led Larry Barton to leave cartooning and concentrate on painting that which endures. But then, years after he'd left the world of daily journalism, he'd still sometimes read the newspaper and jot down notes and sketches for the cartoons he'd couldn't resist drawing, if he were still doing that sort of work.
• Linda Brinson is the Journal's editorial-page editor. She can be reached at lbrinson@wsjournal.com.
Email
Print
ADVERTISEMENT
N.C. Politics
Federal Politics
Advertisement
