Queena Stovall

Analysis on Queena Stovall Exhibit (Using The Method)


I plan to focus on “Folk Art” in this analysis. First I will start with what exactly is Folk Art? Folk Art depicts a broad range of objects that exhibit’s artistic traditions and traditional social values of a variety of social groups. Folk Art is normally made by people who lack or have little academic artistic training nor have a deep desire to imitate “fine art” or use specific region’s our countries techniques and styles.
When looking at her collection of paintings I noticed something very peculiar. Most of her artwork had a brief description beside the piece. I read over several and noticed that all the pieces related to her life, were about her life, the people in her life, etc. except for one piece. The piece was titled, “Lawdy, Lawdy, What’ll I do?” This painting was based on a newspaper article and in the paper was a picture of a burning house. All of Stovall’s works except for this one are based on her life. So why did she create a painting out of the norm that did not directly relate to her life? Was there maybe a connection only she knew or some kind of significance? That is one thing I am sure we may never know. One other unusual thing is that most of her work is a little off proportion. Folk Art was defined as made by people who didn’t have a proper artistic training, and Stovall had no proper training.
Looking at her paintings I noticed numerous exact repetitions. Most all of her paintings included run down barns, fields, people, lumber, farm animals, dogs and trees. The most important in my mind are the people. Every single painting included people, people that she knew.
Skipping briefly to repetitions of similar kinds and details. Many of the pieces portrayed movement. I think this was used to depict life in a more realistic way. Life is constantly changing and is constantly busy. The repetition of people working or working around something I think shows the importance of not just every day life, but that work played a major role during that time (and even today is still does). I saw people cooking at fires, shucking corn, toiling the ground, preparing picked crop, gathering wood, etc. All of these actions are jobs and tasks they had to complete. One definition for Folk Art is that it portrays traditional social values. I believe that one social value was the importance of hard labor. In those times they did not have appliances that did most of the work, they had to do all their work by hand. Labor depicts real life. I saw two or three paintings contained religious themes. They were kind of hidden in the background compared to the other objects and themes in the painting. In one there is a board that states, “The Lord Will Provide”, in another painting the family is gathered around reading the bible, and saying their prayers.
I located many details that suggested “binary oppositions”. The main in reference to her style was that many objects in the paintings either had intent detail or no detail at all. One painting I looked at had a plain tree while the chickens, the people, and some objects had great detail. Why did she choose to detail some things and not detail others? I believe it was to show importance, relevance, or significance. Maybe what was not painted in great detail was only implied that it was there but really had nothing to do with the theme or importance of the painting. What I do not understand is why some of the things she detailed (like chickens for example) in most people’s opinions does not seem to have any significance. Maybe what she detailed was based on familiarity, and what she lacked to detail was based on unfamiliarity. I did notice that she never lacked to detail the people in her paintings. And we are sure that these people had some importance in her life or else she wouldn’t have painted them. Although most of the paintings included movement there were however some stillness. The stillness was mainly portraying people who were sitting in a chair or laying on a bed, not doing any work as movement suggests. Another is the suggestion of death vs. life. Some times the trees and grass looked healthy and alive, while other times the trees and grass/crops looked dead. It would be easy to understand that with life there is always death because in itself death is a part of life. Other opposite binaries are: Caucasian race/ African race, color/no color, happy emotions/sad emotions, religious themes/secular themes.
The main anomaly I located was the painting about the fire which I mentioned earlier. It would make sense because that painting was the one painting that seemed to not represent an event that happened in her life. It was instead something she read out of a newspaper.

Major Discoveries:

1. The use or lack of detail to represent importance, relevance, or familiarity.
2. Movement is portraying life because life is always moving and changing.
3. The persons in her paintings are people she knew.
4. Folk Art is a depiction of real life.