As one of the nine prefectures in ancient China, Qingzhou boasts profound deposits of history and culture and brilliant folk arts. Qingzhou is a city famous its history and culture in China, an excellent tourist city in China, a national garden-like city, and the hometown of folk culture (calligraphy and painting) in China. Qingzhou Farmer Painting is a kind of native art having been developing and growing on the basis of the long history of Qingzhou. In the periods of Longshan Culture, the Han Dynasty and the Southern and Northern Dynasties, the artistic aesthetics, formal composition, styles, features and other primitive genes of Qingzhou Farmer Painting came into being, including the door paintings and gods’ pictures drawn by farmers themselves and the auspicious patterns drawn on such articles as cloth-wrappers, wardrobes and ceilings. In the period of the Yuan Dynasty and the Ming Dynasty, the kites of Qingzhou painted with various patterns were prevalent in the rural area, the Kite Painting went toward its maturity gradually, and Qingzhou Farmer Painting emerged out of the Kite Painting and became an independent genre of painting.
In the 1960s and the 1970s, Qingzhou Farmer Painting developed rapidly, and a lot of farmer paintings based on “Cultural Revolution” could be seen throughout streets and alleys. Nowadays, along with the continuous expansion of the creative team, a new creation climax of Qingzhou Farmer Painting has gradually come into being, with the number of creators having reached 20 thousand. Qingzhou Farmer Painting has outstanding characteristics. Mr. Li Ronghai, former deputy secretary general of Chinese Artists Association, has been engaging in research into Qingzhou Farmer Painting for a long time. His comment on Qingzhou Farmer Painting is “abundant imagination, full composition, gorgeous colors, and strong local characteristics”. From a primitive and simple perspective, Qingzhou Farmer Painting regards the world with a “non-tricky” view, showing the artistic beauty of original ecology. As one of the typical representatives of Chinese folk painting, Qingzhou Farmer Painting has been extensively affirmed in the domestic and overseas art circle. Due to its simple, unadorned and originally-ecological form of artistic expression, Qingzhou Farmer Painting is very popular among common folks.