SIMPLISTIC, colorful art lures visitors Occupying an area of 4,500 mu (3 square kilometers), Jinshan Farmer Painting Village is sited in Zhonghong Village in Fengjin, a water town in Jinshan District.

The village combines dining, entertaining and art together. Here visitors can see the creation of farmer paintings and relax their heart and soul under a natural environment.

When stepping into the village, visitors encounter an exhibition venue that showcases nearly 61 Jinshan farmer paintings, each a representative work from a period of time. Occupying 300 square meters, the exhibition hall is built in a folk architecture style.

Here, visitors can approach a farmer painting and get a clear timeline about its origin, its development and its current condition. They can chat with a farmer about his paintings and purchase works to take home.

But the village is not only about farmer paintings. It is divided into five sections with different functions. For example, the southern kitchen garden planted with fresh vegetables of the season provides an opportunity for the city’s children to have an agricultural class.

Some vegetables are also for sale to visitors. The garden also teaches about irrigation, ranging from human labor to electric irrigation.

Mini-golfing is also an interesting game for visitors of all ages.

Besides these entertaining activities, the village offers farm-flavored food. There is a two-story restaurant with fresh raw food at reasonable prices. Those interested may visit the restaurant’s traditional kitchen.

At the Village Carnival, there are several traditional games that once prevailed, such as swing on the water and kicking shuttlecock. Some older visitors may find their childhood memories come back through these games.

Recently there are more visitors to the village, and many are enjoying something completely different from the relaxed, down-home appeal of the village. China’s first “upside-down house” recently opened to the public inside the village. Occupying an area of 200 square meters, the optical illusion is the only two-story upside-down building in the world. Visitors will be amazed from the first moment when stepping into the building. The bed and sofa seem to be on the ceiling, creating an unreal feeling that visitors are walking in the air, upside down.

It is suggested that old visitors not linger too long inside the room, as it might cause giddiness.

Some visitors even claim that because of this visual game, they feel that they are walking on a cloud.

Chen Huifang and Wang Meiying

For Chen Huifang, this family spans four generations. Now 44, the charismatic Chen began painting as a child, inspired by her father who painted on traditional wood stoves as a hobby when he was back from working in the fields.

“My parents were working in the fields from morning to night,” recalls Chen. “My sister and I would be home alone, bored, and so we turned to imitating my father’s paintings.”

The hobby stuck, and she became a full-time artist in 1988. Her sister also has a studio around Fengjing.

Today, Chen and her mother, Wang Meiying, share a workspace in the village.

Wang farmed until the 1980s when someone took over their farmland. With time to spare, her mother turned to painting with her husband and daughters.

“My son paints as well, but as he is currently in university with no intention to pursue this as a career, it is merely an interest.”

Like her son, Chen had not intended to go into painting in the first place. “I studied landscaping in high school, and I was intending to work in the industry,” says Chen.

“But I was really passionate about drawing, and realistically speaking I earned more as a painter than at my temporary job at a park. I eventually decided to become a farmer painter.”

Chen Weixiong and Gong Caijuan

In the same farmer painting village is another family of painters — Chen Weixiong and his wife, Gong Caijuan. Now 62, Chen began drawing in 1976. A native of Jinshan, his family had worked on the land for 12 generations but he gave up farming in 2006 when he moved into the village as a recognized artist with his wife.

Although they still live in their ancestral home just 10 minutes away from the village, they have been painting in the workspace together with a disciple, 21-year-old Qian Xi, a distant relative that has been learning this painting style from Chen since 2010.

Although some painters merely create stylized paintings, Chen, as a lifelong farmer, paints from his own experiences. Like Chen’s mother, Gong started painting in 1988 after being influenced by her husband.

“Farming was very difficult and my children were young,” says Gong.

“But farmer paintings allowed me to gain attention and fame, and it was much less work than on the field.”

It was also convenient that Gong’s family were silk painters. “She already had an artistic eye when she started out,” her husband says proudly.

Farmer paintings give the perception that these are created by farmers who only paint in their free time. But Chen says this is just a painting style today.

In the past, only works produced by peasants who worked on the land were considered to be farmer paintings. However, as a genre of painting today, it is a simplistic way of painting that imitates the lack of artistic training the original painters had. Exaggerated figures, bright colors, idealized images — farmer paintings draw on everything for inspiration.

“It’s a very free way of painting,” explains Chen. “You simply draw whatever you want from your heart.”

Zhu Xi

The vice chairman of the Jinshan Peasant Drawing Academy, Zhu Xi, echoes this definition, saying that farmer paintings are merely a style. “The history of Jinshan farmer paintings began around the 1950s, when the youths who had been educated elsewhere headed back to their homes. They drew and inspired villagers around them to draw as a hobby while farming full time,” explains Zhu. A trained artist whose works carry modernist influences, Zhu himself still paints, but focuses more on researching, promoting, and working on continuing farmer painting beyond the current generation of celebrated artists today.

“I did not start out as a farmer painter,” says Zhu. “But I was selected from my middle school to learn farmer painting with the famed art teacher Wu Tongzhang. It was about getting away from professional artistic training, but to experience life as a farmer in order to paint like them.”

Zhu’s Full Barns (1975), co-painted with Chen Mingmin, later became the first farmer painting to be exhibited in an annual National Art Exhibition.

“Farmer painting is special, ironically, because of its lack of skill,” explains Zhu. “It’s back-to-the-basics, innocent, and painted in bright colors that are attractive to the eye. It is easy to appreciate in a fast-paced environment like our own today where people are longing to go back to a slow, rhythmic life.”

However as life evolves with development, farmer painting evolved along with it. “Basically, farmer painting today is a traditional craft, but with modern artistic sentiments drawn on canvas instead of the walls above the stoves where it first began,” says Zhu.

The art of farmer painting was designated by the Chinese government as an intangible cultural heritage in 2006, which led to the building of the Jinshan Farmer Painting Village, aimed at attracting visitors and a wider on-the-ground understanding of this art form. Ironically, it seems to have placed difficulty on the painters themselves. Chen and her mother, Chen and his wife have taken to creating only in their own homes at night. “It does get distracting” is echoed by both families in reaction to the throngs of tourists that walk through their workspaces everyday. “We draw at home and just color or copy old paintings here,” says Gong.

For Zhu, the struggle is not to create but to continue this art form. “It is difficult to promote this art form,” says Zhu. “(As works are duplicated) there is less interest from people today given that the commercial value of these works are lower. Furthermore the number of farming villages are decreasing, and people look down on these areas, deeming them too backwards.”

As such, the academy is looking for students to learn and appreciate farmer paintings through partnerships and workshops with schools, ranging from elementary schools to universities. “In sum, farmer painting is a traditional art form that used to be on stoves and stitching but are now on canvas,” Zhu explains. “It is worth preserving by virtue of its importance to Chinese culture.”

Meanwhile, these paintings seem to have taken off, particularly in Japan, where both Chen Huifang and Chen Weixiong have published calendars or books showcasing their works. Historians, artists and others hope this popularity will continue on to save the livelihood of these colorful and fascinating paintings exhibiting a life that is slowly being forgotten.