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If you live in Albuquerque—or even in Denver, Houston, Miami or Phoenix—you’ve probably seen Noé Barnett’s vibrant artwork adorning walls around town.
Here in Albuquerque, his works include the bold, floral murals at The ABQ Collective and Green Jeans in the Northeast Heights, the haunting Martin Luther King Jr. tribute Downtown, and the striking Somos Unidos mural at the corner of Coal and Second in Barelas.
But you probably don’t know his story. Barnett is a native of Albuquerque with a degree in Fine Art from the University of New Mexico. He’s been painting murals full-time for the last 5 years.
And, at the relatively young age of 31, he’s making a good living doing it.
“Not many people get to live their dream,” says Michelle Barnett, his mother. “But he’s out there grinding, sometimes 24 hours a day, to get it done.”
It didn’t start out that way. Barnett grew up wanting to be in law enforcement like his dad, a former federal agent with the Department of Energy.
He studied criminal justice at the University of New Mexico and worked as an Albuquerque Police Department service aide for a year. He entered the APD academy more than once, but he was dismissed for what he calls “trivial reasons.” After his last rejection, he was at his lowest point ever.
“I was 22 and I thought my life was over. My plans were shattered,” he says. I decided to go back to school. I was looking at a list of majors and I decided to become an art major. I think God’s hand guided me in that direction.”
As a boy, Barnett was a quiet kid who had always turned to art for solace, says his mother.
“He was always drawing. And even when I thought Noé was going through a rough time, if he was coloring or doodling or drawing, I knew he was okay.”
So he went back to school, graduated in 2018 and began creating full time.
It was a scary time for his parents, who worried about traditional concepts like “insurance” and “job security,” but they kept the faith, convinced his talent was gifted by God.
One of his first works, created during the pandemic, was a so-called “secret mural” located on then-city property on the West Side. It was on land not readily accessible to the public, but it could be seen from the Bosque.
It caught the eye of Bernalillo County Public Art Project Coordinator Kent Swanson.
“It was kind of a practice work, a re-writing of American history based on key Black figures in music and sports and history,” says Swanson. “It was around that time that I went to his website and learned about his reputation as an upcoming artist/rock star.”
Later in 2020, Swanson was sorting through unsolicited public art proposals for the county’s art collection and saw a submission from Barnett.
“He submitted several two-dimensional works that were kind of inspired by graffiti art,” says Swanson. “They had a really elegant quality to them, beyond what he had done with his mural work. They were gallery-worthy pieces. You could tell he was refining his smaller two-dimensional work.”
One of Barnett’s pieces—a large oil, aerosol, charcoal and glass microbead painting titled “Give Life”—was selected for the county’s collection and now hangs in a prominent place in the lobby of the county’s Alvarado Square headquarters.
Around the same time, the City of Albuquerque Arts Board and the city’s Keep Albuquerque Beautiful program commissioned Barnett to create a memorial mural for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. alongside apprentice artists with the youth-focused non-profit organization Working Classroom.
It was a great honor and the work, “Mountain Top,” located at Tijeras and First, turned out beautifully.
But it worried Barnett. Was he chosen to do it just because he was Black? Or because of his talent? As a young Black man, it’s a question he says he always—no matter how accomplished he has become—struggles with.
“Also, I don’t like always having to make stuff as a response to something that happens. That was after the George Floyd protests and since then I haven’t felt the desire.”
Barnett describes his painting method as “very digital” and suffused with light. For example, when he is going to paint flowers—his current most common theme—he arranges them and puts a bright light behind them to illuminate every feature. Then he takes a picture on his phone and paints directly from that.
“The light is the subject and the medium,” he explains. “Light is representative of good things, of hope and love and faith. It’s also about flowers because they use light to feed themselves, photosynthesis to grow and give us beauty. They’re solar-powered.”
His mother says her son has always been sort of deep.
“He doesn’t use a lot of words,” she says.” I call him my professor—he uses words I have to go to the dictionary to look up. His art has a deeper meaning than people think.”
In addition to successfully submitting proposals to public art programs across the U.S., Barnett also participates in “mural festivals” in various cities.
At these festivals, artists are invited to create murals in public spaces. Through those gatherings, Barnett has made connections that have led to paid work in cities like Denver and Phoenix. He estimates he’s created hundreds of murals in his lifetime.
One of his favorite spaces to paint though is right here at home. He’s painted the walls at Citizen Church, where he attends, with inspiring images over and over again.
So how does he define success?
“In my career, people always told me that I’d need to leave Albuquerque and go to a bigger city if I had real ambition to succeed,” he says.
That’s not proven to be true for him.
“I think success is being able to make the things I feel led to make without any reservation, to continue to do that work and to have that work change,” he says. “I might not always be painting flowers. But I want to be creatively true to myself—and what that looks like is more malleable.”