Paul died on December 6, 2025.
On May 16, 2017, he was interviewed for the Oral History project of the Pritzker Military Museum about his life and his time in the Marine Corps (1969-1972). Here is that interview: click Video to see a short clip (about 3 minutes); click Podcast to see the whole interview.
https://www.pritzkermilitary.org/whats_on/holt-oral-history-program/c-paul-barker
A portfolio of images from the Airborne Special Ops Museum, the Cantigny First Division Museum (exhibits for Battle of the Bulge, WW1 and Vietnam III Corps Map), and my military paintings. I haven’t included images from the Marine Corps Museum. To view the whole collection in sequence, click the first image, then use arrows on the left and right to advance or retrace.
This morning was a fine, sunny morning. I sat out on the front porch swing watching the world go by across our front lawn while enjoying a healthy breakfast. Organic nuts, seeds and berries with organic soy milk in an organic bowl.
I was smugly content that I was getting my minimum daily requirement of organic riboflavin, bioflavinoids, vitamin F, phyto-nutrients, proto-miscreants and other essential, important sounding stuff.
Tasted like the box it came in. Good roughage, I guess.
Like many minds, mine tends to wax philosophical before I’m completely awake.
After months of hard work, we launched this website officially today, July 24, 2014, which I note for the sake of historians who will surely want to record the date for posterity. We used Constant Contact to send an email to everyone in my email contacts, both business contacts and friends, and so far have heard back many friendly congratulations. Continue reading
On a cold winter’s day in 1985 when I lived in The-middle-of-nowhere, Illinois (near Kankakee), I decided to go into mural painting as a full-time job and I asked my seven-year-old son, J.P., what I should call my new company. His immediate response was, “Call it Google!”
Continue reading
I’ve been interviewed for local TV newscasts on a number of jobs. As I mentioned in my Mostly True Tale, Why They Call It Windows, I’ve recently been editing some of these videos for this website. Here are the news interviews uploaded so far gathered together in one place. Continue reading
I’m a frustrated filmmaker. Continue reading
One of my most consistent and enjoyable clients is the Henry Vilas Zoo in Madison, Wisconsin. The director, now retired, was a Viet vet like myself, and a former Green Beret, so we hit it off instantly, trading War stories. My most recent job for Henry Vilas was in 2012, some rainforest walls in the Education building which included an Anaconda exhibit. The two huge snakes, on the other side of a plexiglass sliding door, made no secret of their desire to help me paint. At least I think that’s what they wanted. Continue reading
In late 2011, the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago asked me to repair a number of deteriorating murals in their primate building and aviary. Continue reading
A brief informal video of Santa Claus, his sleigh, and his reindeer I painted late fall 2013 (including Rudolph, his nose not yet painted red) for a residential client in the Chicago suburbs to install on his rooftop in time for Christmas. Continue reading
Some of my earliest memories are of the Audubon Park Zoo in New Orleans. My family lived in my Grandfather’s big house within hearing distance of it. As a toddler I knew when it was noon because the lions would start calling for lunch. I still love the quaint WPA zoo buildings with animals carved into the brick, the formal fountains and statuary. But in retrospect I realized that the zoo in the early 50s was actually an animal prison with iron bars whose tops curved down into spikes aimed at the animals. The inmates lived out their life sentences in small cells. Given the spirit-crushing boredom, I can’t help sympathizing with an inmate taking the opportunity to fling something at the gawking bipeds outside. Continue reading
A long time ago, when I was working as a custom cabinetmaker and doing murals as a sideline, I was hired to paint a religious scene in the lunchroom at a Catholic hospital in a rural Illinois town. Supervising me would be the half-dozen-or-so nuns from the order that had founded the hospital. Continue reading
I was painting a beach scene for a flightless shore bird exhibit for the renovation of the aviary at the Milwaukee County Zoo in 1993. The Zoo folks seemed pleased with what they were seeing, commenting on how realistic the sand dunes looked. “Like you could just run up them,” they said. Continue reading
It all started while on my first zoo job at the Milwaukee County Zoo. They asked me to paint lichen on a tree trunk in a rhino hornbill exhibit in the aviary. While I was making the green-and-gray blobs, I realized one of them looked sort of like a silhouette of a person, so I added a tall collar and a pompadour and, voila — Elvis! Continue reading
