In the early days of his career, the famous director Ang Lee worked as a "family cook" at home for 6 years, relying on his wife to make money to support him.
There is such a farmer, who began painting at the age of 6, and when he became an adult, he almost never worked, and relied on his parents and wife to support him, and became a well-known "lazy man" and "soft rice eater".
To everyone's shock, after 28 years of insisting on painting, his paintings were finally recognized and sold for a high price of 1.3 million.
The sources in this article are from CCTV and China Youth Daily, but in order to improve the readability of the article, the details may be polished, please read sensibly, for reference only!
The famous "lazy man"
This farmer's name is Xiong Qinghua, he likes to paint when he was a child, and the people in the village praise him for his talent, and his parents also think that it is a good thing for their son to have a skill, but as he grows older, he stays at home all day, which seems incompatible with this society.
His peers either go out to work or farm at home, and there is always "business" to do, but Xiong Qinghua never seems to have thought about his future life, nor does he worry about making money to support his family, how can such a person have a career.
Sometimes he would show his paintings to others, but the villagers would scoff at his paintings, "How can a cow fly in the sky? This is blown up", "How can a child grow on a tree?", "Why is the wheat not golden?"
In short, the villagers felt that his paintings did not look like anything, and these paintings were all "silly".
When Xiong Qinghua was a child, he saw Picasso's paintings by chance, and suddenly felt that a certain part of his life was touched.
He was obsessed with the style, creating a world of his own on his canvases.
In 1998, a woman walked into Xiong Qinghua's life, she was Fu Aijiao.
When she saw Xiong Qinghua's paintings, it was as if she was in a fairy tale world in a dream, déjà vu, but full of incredible magic, although she couldn't say what these paintings were good about, but she just felt that Xiong Qinghua was a genius of painting.
Xiong Qinghua has dark skin and is not handsome, but Fu Aijiao thinks that he is talented, and Xiong Qinghua, who is usually taciturn, has no restraint in front of Fu Aijiao, and becomes eloquent, and the two soon got married.
After marriage, Fu Aijiao supported her husband's painting very much, but their child was born, Fu Aijiao's meager income was difficult to bear the family expenses, so she had to discuss with her husband, hoping that he would go out to work with her, looking at the child who was waiting to be fed, Xiong Qinghua agreed.
The couple came to work in a factory in Shenzhen, Xiong Qinghua, who had never "worked", was clumsy and could not adapt to the work on the assembly line.
The wife looked at her angry husband, just shed tears, she understood her husband's feelings, but the reality is so helpless, if you don't earn money, what should the children do?
The two finally decided that Xiong Qinghua would go home to paint, Fu Aijiao would continue to go out to work, looking at his wife with a sad face, Xiong Qinghua also felt deeply remorseful, and a nameless fire against reality made him uncomfortable.
In this way, Xiong Qinghua has another nickname - "Eater of Soft Rice", he has become a well-known "lazy man" in the village, and some people even educate children and will use him as a negative teaching material.
Xiong Qinghua ignored these rumors, and just silently painted quietly, just like when he was a child.
Dreams that have been held on since childhood
Xiong Qinghua was born in 1976 in a peasant family in Xiantao, Hubei Province, when children liked to read comic books, and his father would often buy them for him.
From the age of 6, he was able to copy the characters from comic books into his own notebook, and his family was delighted with this ability to teach himself.
When he was in elementary school, he became a "little star" in the class, and many of his classmates liked his paintings, and Xiong Qinghua was no longer limited to copying, but began to try to draw some things he saw.
However, due to the lack of professional guidance, his paintings are actually very immature, but in the eyes of the people around him, this "little painter" is a genius, and the people in the village praise him.
Xiong Qinghua painted all the way to junior high school, his middle school teacher praised his paintings, encouraged him to persevere, and he would definitely achieve something in the future, and the teacher's recognition made Xiong Qinghua feel confident and more devoted to painting.
But in this way, there was not much energy to study other courses, Xiong Qinghua's grades plummeted, junior high school ended, and Xiong Qinghua, who was in the rebellious period, simply dropped out of school.
When the famous painter Chen Danqing served as a doctoral supervisor at Tsinghua Academy of Fine Arts, he could not receive a single student for three years, because those who had strong painting ability could not pass the cultural class, which also made Chen Danqing finally resign.
Just like what is said in the movie "Hero": "If a person is nameless, he can concentrate on practicing swords", and the growth of geniuses always has a different path.
Xiong Qinghua, who dropped out of school and stayed at home, completely put aside all the interruptions and immersed himself in his painting world every day, and all the things in life became the material for his paintings.
Wheat fields, cattle and sheep, children running crazy in the village, villagers working in the fields, this land that gave birth to him and raised him, was depicted by him little by little on the canvas.
Xiong Qinghua, who grew up slowly, gradually understood that in his life, he would probably be associated with painting, and the dream he had buried since he was a child would eventually become the direction of his life.
Success is both accidental and inevitable
In 2006, Xiong Qinghua heard that there was a place in Shenzhen where many painters from all over the country gathered to not only paint, but also to make money, and he also wanted to share some of the burden of life for his wife, so he went to apply for the job with hope.
The person in charge of recruitment asked him to revise a painting, Xiong Qinghua felt that the painting was not characteristic, so he painted the character's cheeks even redder, and the recruiter saw that he was wasting time and couldn't draw at all.
Xiong Qinghua had to go home in disgrace, embarrassed to tell the truth to the villagers, but said that the pay over there was too low, and the self-confidence of the past was gone, and he even had some doubts about whether his paintings were really useless.
That time was his most depressed day.
In 2010, his old classmate Lei Caibing returned to his hometown and learned that Xiong Qinghua was still insisting on painting, so he wanted to enjoy it.
Lei Caibing used to be obsessed with painting, but he didn't stick to it, when he was in junior high school, Xiong Qinghua was his idol, but he didn't expect his old classmates to look so depressed now.
Xiong Qinghua took him to his home, and the moment he walked into the studio, Lei Caibing was shocked!
The paintings that fill the studio make it difficult to find a place to stay, and the intense and exaggerated abstract art is like thunder hitting Lei Caibing, he knows how to paint, and after looking closely, he realizes that the value of these paintings may be far beyond imagination.
Lei Caibing kept taking pictures, and then uploaded these paintings to the Internet, which quickly caused a strong response on the Internet, and people began to take the initiative to contact him to buy these paintings, Xiong Qinghua knew for the first time that his paintings could still be sold for money.
A curator in Beijing approached Xiong Qinghua and bought a few paintings for 5,000 yuan each, hoping to open an exhibition for Xiong Qinghua in Beijing, and Xiong Qinghua agreed.
In 2015 and 2016, Xiong Qinghua held two art exhibitions in Beijing, one of which was sold for 1.3 million yuan, and his painting was finally recognized by the public.
With financial affluence, Xiong Qinghua no longer has to worry about life, and he has transformed his hometown studio into a fairytale-like two-story villa with a small garden outside where he paints every day.
Xiong Qinghua began to hold frequent exhibitions in Beijing, Shenzhen, Guangzhou and other places, and many people persuaded him to develop in big cities, but he said that all his creative inspiration came from this village with a local flavor, where there are people he loves and the soil he loves.
Xiong Qinghua has never received professional painting training, completely relying on his own exploration to create, all paintings are original works, never painted commercial copying, his success may be called accidental, but this persistent persistence, also made his success inevitable.
epilogue
As long as you have a dream in your heart, the best time to start doing something is now.
Qi Baishi became famous at the age of 56, and Sanders founded KFC at the age of 62, insisting on moving forward towards his dream, even if he will fail in the end, but along the way, he will never be empty-handed.
Maybe Xiong Qinghua is just an accidental case, but countless ordinary people who chase their dreams, as long as they have tried their best, their stories will also light up the fireworks of life.
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Reference:
1. "From Twenty Years of Loneliness to "Picasso in the Chinese Village": A Painter's Dream of an Ordinary Peasant", Yangtze Evening News
2. Xiong Qinghua, a peasant painter: Endless hometown, endless nostalgia
3. "A Farmer, but also a Painter", China Youth Daily