Painting for Happiness

Farmer and painter, Wusiman Yiming, has never heard of Pablo Picasso or Vincent Van Gogh. He has no idea about Chinese painters like Lin Fengmian and Li Keran. His art knowledge is confined to painters from his hometown of Makit county, in Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region. But this doesn't affect his creativity or passion for painting.

Yiming started to record what he saw by painting on walls and paper at the age of 15. His brush strokes brought the daily lives of Uygur people to life and depicted scenes of families eating meals, drinking tea or singing and dancing to celebrate a harvest.

In Yiming's works, the sky is often blue, green or yellow and the color of the earth can turn from red to gold. Ships and horses are painted bright yellow as the farmer says they appeared that way to him under the bright sunshine.