Hank Dewald, Herald Staff Writer

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HALIFAX — Barbara Ann Newsome-Bray has returned home. Her artwork is being featured at the Halifax County Arts Center Gallery and she says she is here to stay.

“When my mother died in 2005, I took over her house near Conway, so I’m really back home,” Newsome-Bray said. Her life has taken her on a round-about trip since leaving her childhood home in Northampton County.

Born in the small town of Margarettsville, Newsome-Bray is the second-born of six daughters and one brother. “I am a daughter of a generation of women sharecroppers and hired hands,” she said. She grew up in northeastern North Carolina during the 1950s. 

Her mother and father were hired hands on a farm with seven children.  Her grandparents were sharecroppers in Northampton County.  “It was this time period that seems to vibrate in my spirit,” she said about her recapturing memories on canvas.

While her favorite art mediums are watercolors and acrylics, she is also a sculptor and owned her own gallery, Unique Unlimited Art Gallery and Studio in Greensboro, before her move back home to Pendleton, in Northampton County.

Newsome-Bray attended community colleges twice, once for cosmetology and again to study computer graphics and advertising design. She went on to Greensboro College where she studied music and fine arts.

She continued her studies in graphic design and printing at A&T State University before finally finishing up at Bennett College in the entrepreneurial program. “I’m a life-long student,” she said, “I’m always trying to learn.” That yearning for knowledge came at an early age, while she was attending Willis Hare Elementary School, Newsome-Bray said. “There I met Mr. And Mrs. Spalding. He was the principal and she was the librarian. They had a strong influence on me.”

Several teachers took part in grooming Newsome-Bray, but Clara G. Hamilton, her art teacher at Conway Elementary School, would become her true mentor. “She had me design all of her bulletin boards,” she said with a laugh, remembering Hamilton, whom she still visits today.

At each stop along her way through various schools, Newsome-Bray would find ways to feature her art, mostly through helping design windows, walls, banners and murals, but also with computers and Web sites.

“I’ve done a little of everything,” she said, again with a laugh. “I’ve been a goat-herder, a livestock producer and even have a license to sell goat meat. I became involved in the Guilford County agri-tourism business and started my own petting zoo. That was the problem though, once I gave them names, I could no longer sell them,” she said of her goats. Her livestock career ended as a degenerative disc disease slowly began to worsen. “I donated all of my animals to Hardin’s Farms, a small family farm.”

Newsome-Bray now wants to help others with disabilities rehab through painting. “I only really began painting on canvas at 35, and it has really helped me. I have always loved to give back to my community, wherever that community was,” she said.

She was the featured artist at the November Arts Council Sip ‘n’ See. In addition, Newsome-Bray’s artwork has been displayed at 19 locations and featured in 14 publications. She also does speaking engagements throughout North Carolina.

She has contributed the use of her art for a host of fundraisers, commissions, auctions and displays to several non-profit and church organizations, local small businesses and schools.

You can see Newsome-Bray’s artwork now through the end of the month at The Gallery located at 1027 Roanoke Ave.#