One of Lu's painting, entitled A Xiang Enjoying Tea. Photos: Courtesy of Lu Yongzhong

By Hou Shuqi

Lu Yongzhong has stood at the forefront of the Jinshan peasant painting movement.

The popular and prolific painter has founded an artist community devoted to Jinshan peasant painting and has become a pioneer in marketing this style of Chinese artwork, which some Westerners have begun to show an interest in. "Jinshan peasant painting captures the unique style of the southern Yangtze delta's folk art, and fits with the Western ideal of returning to nature. It will surely be successful," the Chinese-born British writer Han Suyin has said.

Jinshan peasant painting was born out of different types of Chinese folk art, including embroidery, paper cutting, paper folding, and weaving, but has since developed its own unique style. Peasant painters use bright colors and abstract and exaggerated figures to depict their lives and express their emotions, expectations and desires. The style arose in the early 1960s when many painters who worked in the countryside began to influence the local peasant women, who were poorly educated but highly skilled at folk art. They quickly took to painting. "Those women probably knew nothing about painting beyond where to buy the brushes. Free of the limitations of traditional training, they used their brushes freely to express their feelings, without affectation," Lu said.

Lu's Life

Lu grew up in this environment. Born in 1970 in Ganxiang village of Jinshan district, Lu's childhood was atypical. When he was 4, he was stricken with an illness that left him bedridden and unable to go to school until age 12. He spent most of time in the hospital, where he entertained himself by reading picture books and copying the illustrations, revealing a talent for drawing. At that early age, Lu said most of his support came from his family. "My father and my two older sisters were my first 'brokers' when I was young," he said. "They were so proud of me and told every one they met that I could draw very well. This motivated me to work really hard on my drawing so I could meet people's high expectations."

In 1989, the Jinshan government founded the Peasant Painting Academy, and recruited Lu, considered one of Jinshan's 10 best painters at the time. He went on to study at the Shanghai Fine Arts Institute, but ended up staying for less than two years. Looking back, he believes that formal training in some way limits a painter's creativity. The peasants who created Jinshan peasant painting did so with an unbridled imagination, free from limitations, Lu said. It is what makes Jinshan peasant painting unique and is what most of the professional painters lack.

A woman's portrait

Throughout his career, Lu has worked on a series of portraits of a fictional peasant woman he called A Xiang. He wanted the drawings to reflect the life and character of the peasant women of past generations. "The ladies of my mother's generation are the real artists in my eyes," he said. "They live simply and never hurt the environment, yet their lives are full of beauty." He acknowledged that it is no longer easy to find this kind of woman, at least he no longer comes across them in his daily life.

Lu helped blaze a trail for professional peasant painters by being among the first to promote a market for this style of artwork, which is now developing quickly. But it also poses a challenge to professional peasant painters.

"Sometimes I need to finish a commissioned painting according to the requirements and timetable of the clients," Lu said. "This is the toughest part of my creative process."

Market-driven creation will unavoidably "destroy the harmony and beauty of painter's heart," Lu said, so professional peasant painters need greater skills and knowledge to evolve in this new environment. "If we want to have more professional peasant painters, then we need a good system to prevent those painters from being polluted by commercialization, and protect their original works," Lu said.

Lu Yongzhong at his studio.

Lu's school

Lu's most famous painting, Happy Countryside, is 0.7 meter high and 16 meters long. It shows how Jinshan peasants celebrate Spring Festival over the first 15 days of the first lunar month. Starting in 1992, Lu spent four years drawing the painting's 5,000 figures, each engaged in different holiday activities in all manner of circumstances. The painting demonstrates all the themes of Jinshan peasant painting. In 1998, the piece was admitted into the Guinness Book of World Records as the longest Jinshan peasant painting in the world.

When he was 26 years old, Lu was invited by a Japanese art exhibition company to visit Japan, beginning what would be one of the most influential and inspiring parts of his life. "I visited nearly every city in Japan. In some respects, I was more familiar with Japan than most of the local people," Lu said. "That's was a valuable experience for me. I met many painters from all over the world, got to know their lives and their ideas. I learned a lot from them."

Lu spent 12 days in the prefecture of Akita. Artists from all over the world had flocked to the countryside, where they built their own studio to work, to show and to sell their pieces, as well as to enjoy a "harmonious life" with the local peasants, he said.

Lu's time in Akita inspired him to open a studio in Shanghai where artists could meet and discuss their ideas, as well as promote Jinshan peasant painting. In 2001, Lu built a 240-square-meter studio on his 40-acre peach orchard. In 2006, with the support of the Jinshan district government, Lu opened his current studio, which in function is more like an artist commune, on 80 acres of a specially designed villa. The community is like an island amid an urbanized sea of Jinshan and downtown Shanghai. The government is helping Lu create his painting commune to protect and promote Jinshan peasant painting and preserve the gradually disappearing rural lifestyle.

Because of globalization, which has turned China into the world's factory and led to the construction of new villages as well as increasing urbanization, the old countryside is gradually disappearing, said Zhang Deming, a professor of humanities at Zhejiang University. "These changes are basically a direct challenge to Jinshan peasant painting and the painters themselves."