GALLERY II - Barry Huffman- "A woman's point of view"

Barry Gurley Huffman was born in Georgia, but raised in her father’s hometown, Sanford, North Carolina. She attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where she received a B.S. degree in Physical Therapy in 1965. The next year she married Allen Huffman of Hickory. Allen had a military obligation that led to living three years in Germany. Prior to leaving Chapel Hill, Barry wanted a picture of their first home with all the plantings she added to the landscape blooming at once. To achieve that, she took six painting lessons at a local church. The resulting house portrait was the beginning.

Over the next 50 years she documented her life as a wife and mother in paintings. Included were current events, travel, family activities, life interests, questions and, sometimes, answers, faith and hard times. She worked in series, such as housewife, hymns, dragons, churches, and, recently, mountain landscapes. She and Allen are collectors of Southern folk art and Catawba Valley alkaline glazed stoneware.

She has self-published several books: Catawba Clay: Contemporary Southern Face Jug Makers, 1997; LaFone Living Art, 2015; A Lady Goes to Sea, 2016; Hand in Hand: Visions and Voices of North Carolina Folk Artists, 2017; Steeples and Stones: Roadside Churches in Western North Carolina, 2018; Blue Voice, Bright Life: a Visual Diary of a Self-Taught Artist, 2021; and Turtle: A Fable of the Storm and the Vine, 2023 She illustrated Catawba Journey, 1982, published by the Catawba County Historical Association. Some of those history illustrations were published by American Heritage Magazine in the September, 1982, issue.

Barry’s paintings have been shown occasionally at local venues , Recently at the Hickory Museum of Art, 2025, and at the Lindenau Museum in Altenburg, Germany in 2004.