Issue link: http://maconmagazine.uberflip.com/i/1540272
October/November 2025 | maconmagazine.com 75 STORY BY CLARENCE W. THOMAS, JR. | PHOTOS BY DSTO MOORE Art and reconciliation put a creative on a path of healing. She's still painting new brushstrokes onto her story. F A I T H O F T H E dreamer M acon native and visual artist Gwendolyn Payton has been through some things with our local history. As a youth growing up in segregated Macon, she witnessed her brother being unjustly arrested. Later, a first cousin she was very close with was chased down while driving with his brother and senselessly shot to death by an angry white motorist, she shared. In 1971, Payton – a talented Mercer University senior double majoring in art and biology in pursuit of a career as a medical illustrator – sought to enter a required art exhibit that included a conceptual piece titled: "Rebirth of Colored Folk." She had been a trailblazer, entering Mercer at the age of 17 only a few years after the campus was integrated, and participated in forming the first Black Student Alliance and pushing for a Black Studies program. But her hopes of completing her art degree and seeing her work in a publicized show was dashed by the art department chair at the time, who described the ethnically themed painting as "too controversial" and "inappropriate." The same professor had previously shared that he did not believe a Black student was smart enough to graduate. This seismic experience added insult to the injury from what she witnessed happening to her family as a child, and sent Payton spiraling into an abyss of hurt, disappointment, and shock. Over time, this caused her to stop creating conceptual art like the piece that had been rejected, and to question her worth as an artist. "It was devastating. But who was I going to tell," she stated in the documentary, "The Faith of the Dreamer: One Woman's Story of Racial Trauma and Healing." Gwendolyn moved on from Macon with just her biology degree, despite completing all course requirements for the art major besides the exhibit. Through the years as an adult, she occasionally inquired about the art major with the university, amidst a busy life managing her husband's pediatric practice and raising a family, but didn't get closure. The historic account of Gwendolyn Payton's story was funded by restorative justice advocates Dan and Brenda Van Ness. The two were in a racial reconciliation group with Gwendolyn and realized how much impact her story was having. They decided to fund a film version so that people would be able to hear it even at events where Gwendolyn couldn't be present. In a remarkable debut, it is directed by one of Payton's four children, Khary Payton. Khary is no stranger to the camera as a veteran live-action and voiceover actor, known for roles like King Ezekiel in the AMC series "The Walking Dead" and Dr. Terrell Jackson in the television soap opera "General Hospital." A packed crowd at Theatre Macon turned out for the LEFT "Indespensible Parts" by Gwendolyn Payton, an updated version of a painting she made decades earlier as a student that was rejected by her professor. BELOW "Destruction from Within" by Gwendolyn Payton. Portrait of a painful past