Folk Art

About

The term covers two overlapping kinds of work. One is traditional: objects made within a community's shared crafts, such as quilts, painted furniture, decoys, weathervanes, shop signs and devotional images, with skills handed down through families and apprenticeship. The other is the work of individuals who taught themselves to paint or carve outside art schools. The label is debated, since it has often been used to hold such makers apart from 'fine' art.

In the early United States itinerant painters such as Ammi Phillips produced flat, strongly patterned portraits for rural families. In the 20th century the Scottish-born labourer John Kane painted crowded views of Pittsburgh, Sister Gertrude Morgan painted visions of the New Jerusalem to accompany her preaching in New Orleans, and Ralph Fasanella painted busy scenes of New York labour and tenement life. In India, Madhvi Parekh draws on the folk imagery of her Gujarat village childhood.