How Do They Look Like?

-- The artistic features of Chinese Farmer's Paintings

 

artistic features

What set Chinese farmer's paintings from other art forms are unique themes, bright colors, exaggerated depiction, and naivety.

The unsophisticated, kind, and often optimistic nature of the peasants is imparted through the strokes of their brushes.

The farmers are rarely restricted by the drawing techniques taught in art academies, thus the way they depict their lives is much less affected. Besides, the artists who reflect their farmer¡¯s lives in an artistic way are also farmers. As they are drawing the real happenings around themselves, the works are usually more affectionate. If an art student was asked to draw the livestock at the same time with a farmer artist, chances are their results are totally different.

However, the paintings did not come from nothing, and are closely related to some traditional arts of embroidering, batik (a fabric dying method), paper-cut, and wall painting. The colors are usually very bright, emitting very enthusiastic and vivid flavors, and artistic technique of exaggeration is frequently used.

Moreover, the rural elegance that comes with farmer¡¯s paintings spreads out the smell of vegetations in the wilderness as compared with the urban life -- noise of business. This feature helps give Chinese farmer¡¯s paintings their edge and accounts for the folk art attracting more favorable attention in recent years.