Emma
Serena "Queena" Stovall was born in 1887 in rural Amherst
county Virginia. She was nicknamed Queena because it was easier
to pronounce then Emma Serena. When Queena was 9 her father died
and the family moved to Lynchburg, then a town of about 18,000.
Queena attended high school but left early to go to work. At age
19, she married a promising businessman some 14 years her senior,
and the couple had 8 children. She started painting at age 62,
when she was already a great-grandmother. Queena is a Southern
memory painter, who often portrayed her black neighbors as well
as her own family. When she died in 1980 she had completed only
47 paintings. Queena has been written about, and a film has been
made about her life. In March 1994 she was one of the artists
in the exhibition "Grandma Moses' Southern Sisters: Queena
Stovall and Clementine Hunter". Her work is in the permanent
collection of the Fenimore House Museum.
