Peasant Art

These pictures come from the Peasant Art Gallery in Xi'an. On our way out of the ancient city, we stopped at this art gallery that is filled with beautiful paintings from the regions peasants. Back in the 1950s, becasue the peasants, who were mostly uneducated, could not express themselves in writing or speech, they were encouraged to express themselves via paintings. This tradition continues today, and in fact peasant children are actually trained in this form of expression so that they can continue the tradition. The artist that you see in the one photo is one of the most successful peasant painters and he now runs the gallery. He has traveled around the world sharing the story of the peasant paintings, in fact, in conversation with him via translator I learned that he was at Ohio State University in 1993, my senior year there, presenting and teaching about the peasant artwork. I bought two of the paintings!