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.

[2] After her brother persuaded her to take an art class at nearby Randolph-Macon Woman’s College in Lynchburg, Stovall began painting at age sixty-two.

Her instructor there was Spanish artist Pierre Daura, who encouraged her to stop taking classes and develop her own unique style.

[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.