St. Joe’s Prep’s Ivan Bailey-Greene finds a passion aside from football: Portrait painting

Ivan Bailey-Greene needed to release his frustration.

The defensive tackle made it a goal to earn a college football scholarship, and heading into his senior year at St. Joseph’s Prep, he believed he was on track to fulfill that dream.

But a midseason knee injury he suffered against La Salle kept him off the field for about five games. He missed out on competing against nonleague and national-caliber teams. He started to question his future, and whether football would be part of it.

“I was angry,” said Bailey-Greene, who’s from Runnemede, Camden County. “I was like, ‘I can’t miss a game.’ I was really trying to push myself. Then I kind of calmed myself down — drawing helped.”

He found a way to channel his anger. Sitting in his basement, with his phone screen propped up, Bailey-Greene spent hours painting portraits of his favorite music artists: Lauren Hill, SZA, Tyler, the Creator, and Drake, among others.

“It helped me get out of my head,” Bailey-Greene said. “It was better to concentrate on something else and get my head into a positive place because I was very upset. I think everybody should have an outlet. With the hustle and bustle of the real world, everybody needs something they like to do.”

Painting helped him discover another passion. Now Bailey-Greene has become known by teachers and classmates as a talented portrait artist.

He plans to keep pursuing art next year at East Stroudsburg, where Bailey-Greene will continue his football career. He’ll major in nursing, following the profession of his mother and grandmother, and is considering minoring in art.

“With football, even though I love it to death, it takes a toll on your body,” Bailey-Greene said. “You’re always thinking, ‘I’ve got to do this, I’ve got to do this.’ When I paint, it just takes my mind somewhere else — I can just drift off.”

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In his senior year, Bailey-Greene is taking an advanced-placement art course in which he has had the chance to grow. He found a niche portraying Black music artists.

“We get love now, but back then we didn’t,” he said of painting Black musicians. “People used to shame us. I always wanted to let our people be beautiful. I really try to make sure that if I’m painting a picture of you that this is going to look exactly like you, and you’ve got to be proud of it.”

Bailey-Greene was always athletic growing up and knew sports could serve as way to receive a college education on scholarship.

However, he never competed in football — he played soccer as a kid. That was until his freshman year at the Prep. Little did he know that the Hawks were a national powerhouse.

“I came in just thinking I’m going to play football,” Bailey-Greene said. “I didn’t know they were this good. I was like, ‘Oh, wow, we have all these different players here.’”

During his junior year, Bailey-Greene started to devote more time to training, including weightlifting and conditioning five days a week. He was on varsity and started to be seen as a leader for the team. He thought there was a possibility that he could play at the Division I level.

Hawks coach Tim Roken saw his potential. He had a conversation with the 5-foot-10, 245-pound Bailey-Greene about his future in football.

“It was hard for him because college coaches can come in and just look at a height and weight, and they just cross somebody off,” Roken said. “I feel like he falls into that category. Some major Division I college coaches would tell me, ‘If he was three inches taller, he’d be a blue-chip recruit.’

“It’s having that real conversation. That’s something that is not in your control. The objective is controlling what you can control, and you’re going to have an opportunity to play college football.”

It’s why the injury felt like a setback, said Bailey-Greene, who finished with 23 tackles for a team that won a state championship this past season, but it made him realize the immediate impact he could have at a smaller school at the Division II level.

That’s when East Stroudsburg, where Roken played quarterback, came into the picture.

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In March, Bailey-Greene received a scholarship offer from ESU. He held offers from Kutztown, Westminster College, and Wilkes. When he visited campus, he felt a similar brotherhood to the Hawks’ program, which sealed the deal.

“[The East Stroudsburg coaches] said, ‘I didn’t know much about you, but after watching your film, wow, we have a sleeper,’” Bailey-Greene said. “I was super excited. My parents came to campus, and they thought it was the place for me.”

Roken added: “He’s got such a good heart but works so hard. A place like East Stroudsburg is great for him. I know Ivan’s going to be really successful in that program, but he’ll be in anything that he wants to do.”

In December, Bailey-Greene went on a field trip to the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York with his Contemporary African American Literature class.

He was amazed by some of the artwork on display, but when he came across painter Henry Taylor’s pieces, Bailey-Greene felt an instant connection.

“Ivan was magnetically attracted to his work,” said Christian Rupertus, who teaches the course at St. Joe’s Prep. “Ivan’s got the artist eye. He would get up close and study brushstrokes and texture.

“The magic of Henry Taylor’s work was that a young, budding-talent Black artist like Ivan can go to the Whitney and see people that look like him, produced by a person who looks like him. That could have been a moment for Ivan to realize that this could be a career for him.”

Drawing came naturally, Bailey-Greene said, but he didn’t do much of it until his junior year. His art teacher Katherine Lee recalls meeting a shy, quiet student when he took an art studio class that year.

His talent, however, did not go unnoticed. Lee quickly saw that Bailey-Greene had a gift when a blank canvas was put in front of him.

“Ivan came in here with a good amount of talent,” said Lee, who graduated from Temple’s Tyler School of Art. “That was never an area that I had to push. Once he started painting, I definitely became a lot more in tune with his technique.

“He knew how to capture the human form and organic forms without any technical guidance. He just had an eye, he knew where to place that line on the paper.”

Bailey-Greene’s favorite design he created so far is of rapper Jamell Demons, known as YNW Melly. But the best part of painting, he said, is sharing his work with others.

Rupertus asked Bailey-Greene if he could design something to hang in the classroom. When Bailey-Greene gave his teacher the final product a week later, Rupertus was in awe:

“It’s this classic image of a really thoughtful Malcolm X. Over the summer, I’m going to get it framed. I was touched. He’s such a sweet, nice kid. I was humbled by the gift itself. He took the risk to explore this other aspect of who he was as a person.”

One day, Bailey-Greene hopes to sell his art to someone famous, he said — or even better, one of the musicians he paints.

While he plans to keep up his football training and preparing for the next level, he also has some ideas about new designs he’ll try this summer.

“I want to start getting into creating bigger,” Bailey-Greene said. “Like the size of a projector. I wanted to start making that size and I have the faces, but I also want to start making bodies and showing people do, like, their movements of art.”