Folk art chronicles China's changing countryside

In a gallery of golden wheat fields on canvas, Wang Yaoyao in a pale pink qipao (traditional long dress) stands as a quiet contrast. The academically trained painter now embraces the unruliness of "farmer painting" — a form of Chinese naive art.

Under Wang's brush, a traditional paper-cutting-style piglet leaps onto a palette, and dives deep into a kaleidoscope of vibrant colors.

"Creating farmer paintings is about pursuing freedom," says the young artist, who studied traditional Chinese painting before joining a district-level workshop in Xi'an city, Northwest China's Shaanxi province, in 2021.

Emerging in Huxian county, now the Huyi district of Xi'an, in 1958, farmer painting began when villagers painted simple strokes on paper during quiet farming seasons. The style then gained a national audience.

From the very first, Wang was captivated by the art's bold use of color and exaggerated, uninhibited forms. A leaf can be blue or red, she says, and creativity can fly free of any conventional rules.

"Take the painting Endless Corn Cobs, for example. The corn, a symbol of a bumper harvest, is depicted as huge as the locomotive carrying it. The artist's yearning for a good harvest is vividly expressed," Wang says. "I really love this kind of free expression."

For Wang, this sense of freedom represents a shared connection among farmer painters across generations, nourishing renewed vitality for their artistic spirits and works.

"Many young people are drawn to farmer painting because of its unconventional styles and the creativity of earlier generations of artists. They come together to learn and carry on the tradition of Huxian farmer painting," she says.

That tradition is never a one-way inheritance.

One of the artists Wang admires most is an 83-year-old painter, who still goes to the studio every day to paint. His style retains the simplicity characteristic of the 1970s and 1980s, while he also makes an effort to learn new approaches to composition from younger artists.

"While he learns from us, we also learn from him," Wang says.

Today's farmer paintings are no longer confined to traditional depictions of rural life.

High-speed trains racing across the landscape, electric vehicles on the roads, mechanized irrigation systems, and major industrial equipment have all entered the artists' field of vision as elements of contemporary China.

China-Europe Railway Express: The Steel Camel Caravan is one of Wang's latest creations. In her painting, the locomotive that once carried enormous corn has been transformed into the China-Europe freight trains carrying Chinese new-energy vehicles from Xi'an to distant markets.

"The rapid development of our hometown is an inexhaustible source of inspiration, and it has also brought broader visions of the future into our works," says the artist.

The paintings, in turn, are giving back to the land where their creators took root.

In Huyi, many farmer painters have turned their backyards into studios and galleries. Chinese and overseas visitors come to appreciate and purchase paintings and experience the creative process, bringing income to the artists.

There are now more than 2,300 farmer painting artists in Huyi, with nearly 10,000 works having been exhibited in 88 countries and regions. From Aug 25 to Sept 3, an exhibition of such paintings was held at the Xinhua News Agency Art Museum in downtown Beijing, showcasing 120 selected works by 53 farmers from Huyi.

Huyi's stories resonate with China's push to advance all-around rural vitalization. The outline of China's 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30) calls for the protection and passing on of rural cultural heritage to promote and develop rural culture.

"Each painting is both a vivid record of changes in rural society and lively artistic testimony to the evolving face of China's urban and rural areas," says Wang Wenji, director of the Huyi District Farmer Painting Museum.

Huxian farmer painting represents an aesthetic tradition that has grown up from the soil, says Ma Fenghui, vice-chairman of the China Artists Association.

For Wang Yaoyao, she imagines whether she will still be holding a paintbrush in her 80s, like the US folk artist known as Grandma Moses, whose style is compared to Chinese farmer painting.

"We are using our brushes to record the changes brought about by rural vitalization, while extending our artistic vision beyond the fields and villages to a much broader world," she adds.

XINHUA