AN INSIDER LOOKING OUT
Xiong Qinghua, who recently held a solo show in Beijing, is seen as a stranger in his native Hubei province. Lin Qi reports.
Xiong Qinghua is considered a “weirdo” in his native Changhe village, near the city of Xiantao in Central China’s Hubei province.
The 40-year-old taught himself oil painting at 14 and two years later he dropped out of middle school to paint while continuing to work on a farm.
Later, he took up odd jobs to support his dream of becoming a painter, including working at hardware shops and delivering milk.
When his fellow villagers began to migrate to cities for better jobs, he stayed behind to depict the dramatic changes in the countryside and in people’s mindsets.
He did not sell any work until 2010 when pictures of his paintings went viral.
People were then amazed by the raw, unsophisticated style of his brushstrokes.
The reality of the countryside, which he portrayed, stirred nostalgia for the peaceful, idyllic rural life that is disappearing amid industrialization and urbanization.
Xiong’s second solo exhibition, Immortal Village, ended on Friday at Beijing’s Chen Gallery, in the 798 art zone, where many of his paintings were sold.
Meanwhile, a book on him titled A Wild Potato has been published.
Reacting to compliments like “Vincent van Gogh of China” because of their similar approaches to rural themes, and the fact their work was not recognized for a long time, Xiong says: “I can only laugh off the comparison. I feel a bit embarrassed. People do not know many (Western) painters and mention the few names they can remember when showing praise.”
“Van Gogh died at 37 and sold only one painting in his lifetime while I have sold more than 50.
“In this respect, I think I’ve outperformed him,” he says, laughing aloud.
Traditional New Year paintings, or nianhua, and picturestory books first ignited Xiong’s interest in art.
So, when he grew older, he used to cycle several hours to the nearby city to buy books on painting and catalogs. He browsed through materials he could not afford at book stores until the closing time.
Through this, he learned to sketch, work with watercolors and do traditional ink painting.
But it was seeing photos of Pablo Picasso’s cubist works that attracted him to oil painting.
He also studied the works of Marc Chagall and other masters.
He says that studying great painters was his way of developing his own style.
“From the beginning, I never painted to please anyone. Otherwise, I would have been a common rustic landscape painter today.
“People call me a farmer painter. But I see myself as a surrealist,” Xiong says.
In his paintings, imagination flourishes and mingles with childhood memories to show half-real, half-magical scenes of the village Xiong was born in.
The painting Walking on Stilts draws on a game he played in childhood.
In it, he places boys not in a natural setting but in a universe, surrounded by planets and man-made satellites. The unexpected juxtaposition shows his hope of a brighter future for rural children.
Another painting Unruly Buffalo recalls his early experiences of transporting grain with his father, Xiong Guangyuan, on a cart.
In the painting, Xiong highlights the freedom of rural life with wit and humor:
A rebellious buffalo breaks loose and “flies” into the sky, taking two farmers up and above the clouds.
In his other works, Xiong shows concern for dying folk traditions because of young adults leaving their villages and industrial pollution damaging the environment.
Xiong’s brushwork also embodies sadness and loneliness.
Speaking of his feelings, he tells of his childhood friends who return from the cities and are unaccustomed to the peace of their village homes, which makes him feel sad.
Despite his love for village life, Xiong also could not resist the lure of city life.
After getting married in 1999, Xiong found a job in a factory in a city.
But he says he quit his job soon because doing the same work on an assembly line every day “almost drove him to a breakdown”.
He later looked for work in Dafen in South China’s Guangdong province, where the village has blocks of wholesale production units of oil paintings. But he was turned down “for not having a diploma in painting and for being unwilling to produce copies”.
So, he returned home to paint and do odd jobs to make ends meet.
At first, he says his fellow villagers who had not heard of oil painting wondered why he had left the city.
“In their eyes, I was a grown-up with a willful child inside, I was seen as a loser. But I believed that there are things more important than eating.
“I can endure suffering. I just can’t stand a life that is neither creative nor interesting. Even when I fail 1,000 times, I still have hope,” he says.
His turning point came in 2010 when a friend put his paintings online bringing him wide attention.
He held his first solo exhibition at the Chen Gallery in 2015 by which time he was known to art dealers and collectors.
His financial situation has since improved: He can now afford better painting tools and he has built a Westernstyle house for his family in the village.
But despite his success, Xiong has no plans to relocate to a city despite the more opportunities that such a move could bring. This is because he dislikes noise and traffic and feels secure working in the countryside.
Still, he doesn’t blend with his fellow villagers.
“Knowing that I make money from painting, those who looked down on me earlier have changed their attitude. But I don’t think they like my work.”
He often depicts some villagers’ devotion to money and their indulgence in gambling and alcohol.
Speaking of Xiong’s work, Chen Min who has authored the artist’s biography A Wild Potato says in the preface: “He paints the land where he is . ... His village is economically depressed and culturally conservative. But using a surrealist approach, Xiong unfolds the magical and profound reality (of the countryside).” Contact the writer at linqi@chinadaily.com.cn