An insider looking out

Painter Xiong Qinghua creates in his Western-style home and studio in Changhe village, Hubei province, many surrealist images that reflect the serene past of the countryside and its current realities. [Photo by the artist]

"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 picture-story 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.