Queena Stovall (December 20, 1887 – June 27, 1980) was an American folk artist. Sometimes called "The Grandma Moses of Virginia", she is famous for depicting everyday events in the lives of both white and black families in rural settings.[1]
BornEmma Serena Dillard inAmherst County, Virginia, she received the nickname “Queena” from her grandmother because of the way young children would pronounce "Serena". She married Jonathan Breckenridge Stovall, a traveling salesman, in 1908 and the pair had nine children. The family lived inLynchburg, Virginia during the fall and winter and on a farm nearElon, Virginia during the spring and summer.[2]
After her brother persuaded her to take an art class at nearbyRandolph-Macon Woman’s College in Lynchburg, Stovall began painting at age sixty-two. Her instructor there was Spanish artistPierre Daura, who encouraged her to stop taking classes and develop her own unique style.[2]
Stovall's career spanned less than two decades, and she produced forty-nine paintings.[1] Her art depicted scenes of ordinary rural life such as crop harvests, animal butchering, funerals, jarring for the winter, baptisms, cooking, and livestock and estate auctions. Stovall combined bright colors with attentive details, and would use figures out of magazines and advertisements to understand the composition needed for her paintings. Her first solo exhibition was at the Lynchburg Art Center in 1956. Stovall continued to paint until her health started to decline in the late 1960s.[2]
Stovall's paintings were shown in 1988 at the United States Embassy inParis, France.[1]
Stovall's paintings were featured in the 1994 exhibitionGrandma Moses' Southern Sisters: Queena Stovall and Clementine Hunter at the Theatre Art Galleries inHigh Point, North Carolina.[4]
A major exhibition of Stovall's work, featuring 44 of her 49 paintings and titledInside Looking Out, The Art of Queena Stovall, was mounted by curators at the Daura Gallery in 2018 and traveled to theVirginia Historical Society inRichmond, Virginia.[5]
Stovall was featured in the 2019 exhibitMemory Painting: Harriet French Turner and Queena Stovall at theTaubman Museum of Art.[3]
In 2017, theVirginia Department of Historic Resources approved a historic marker in her honor, to be erected near the farm where she spent 35 years of her life, the Wigwam.[10] It was erected in March, 2018.[1]
