Alice Moseley Folk Art & Antique Museum

Alice Moseley taught eighth grade English in Memphis for thirty years. At sixty, caring for her mother who had Alzheimer's, she painted her first forty paintings. Her son took them to the Nashville flea market. A man named Barr bought all forty within thirty minutes to hang in his Kentucky steakhouse chain. That was the day she became a professional folk artist. She painted in acrylics because she said she was impatient and needed something that would dry quickly. Her work depicted Southern life in earlier times — not just scenes, but stories. Some of her more popular titles are *Life Is So Daily*, *The House Is Blue But the Old Lady Ain't*, and *Labor Versus Management*, which shows a farmer throwing his hat down in anger while his mule sits on his hindquarters with a little smile on his face. After her husband died, she moved to Bay St. Louis in 1989 at age eighty. She described those years in Bay St. Louis as the happiest and most successful years of her life. She painted shrimp boats, churches, live oaks, people sitting on porches — Gulf Coast life before Katrina. She painted until her death in 2004 at ninety-four. Her blue house, half a mile from the beach, was untouched by the storm. The museum her son founded preserves her work alongside antiques from the Bay St. Louis she remembered. What you see is one woman's record of a world. Admission is free. Check locally for current hours.