Emily Mattie Lou O’Kelley (1908-1989) was born in Banks County, Georgia and grew up on a farm in the rural community of Maysville as the seventh of eight children. Mattie attended school only into the ninth grade because she was needed more at home. She never married, but rather lived a quiet, even reclusive, life after the death of her parents. Over the years of her life she worked at a variety of jobs. She was a seamstress, a cafeteria cook, and later a worker in a mop yarn mill. At the age of 50, Mattie retired from the mill and four years later ordered canvas and oils from the Sears and Roebuck Catalog. Her subjects center on the life she lived and commemorate the nostalgic scenes of her childhood.

Artist Mattie Lou O’Kelley is entirely self-taught. This along with her style and subjects in painting is what classify her so decidedly as a folk artist. She is considered by critics and art experts as both a landscape artist and a memory painter.

Her paintings tell the story of her birth, childhood games, the work on the farm, and the many celebrations and festivities of rural Georgia. Through her paintings we witness the joys and sorrows of her life and feel the inevitable passing of the seasons. She illustrated the meaning, purposefulness, simplicity and beauty of her life.