Floria is a completely self-taught southern folk art artist. She began her art as a way
to express the dreams and visions she has experienced all her life. A lot of inspiration comes
from her childhood memories. She creates most of her art utilizing a majority of found
materials. She is a retired seamstress, an ordained minister, and has her own small combination
Southern Folk Art Gallery and Church
[see photo at bottom of page] in
Brooklyn, Stewart County, Ga.
I have never met a person with a deeper, more personal, abiding faith in, and love of God, than Floria.
Floria was born in 1951, in Geneva, Alabama. She is the youngest daughter in a family of 18 children.
She lost one sibling in childbirth and three others in accidents. Since the age of six she has lived
in Stewart County, Ga. Floria is married and has two adult children, and three grandchildren.
As a child she spent many hours exploring the local woods. She, along with her dogs and one cat, would leave her home early in the morning and return late in the day. Other children began referring to her as "Moony,” meaning she was different, this nickname didn't worry her a whole lot, because she had her woods and animals.
Floria's family share cropped, picked cotton, cut pulp wood for saw mills, raised sugar cane, corn,
and grew all their own vegetables. They ground the sugar cane into cane juice in their own mule powered
cane mill. Her family sold some of the cane juice in gallon jugs. Employing a homemade, wood fired
evaporator the rest was evaporated down into cane syrup. They would keep a small portion of the cane
syrup for themselves and sell the rest for family income.
Outside Self-Taught Outsider Floria Yancey's Church-Southern Folk Art Gallery, Brooklyn, Ga
