A simple, uneducated woman who has toiled hard all her life has now found fame through her paintings. 

Chang Xiufeng, 73, has spent her life raising her five children in a nondescript village in Henan Province, Central China. A life that has been peaceful and unobtrusive.

However, that life has now changed through the Internet and her vivid memories of village life, captured in her paintings, which are very reminiscent of works by Vincent van Gogh, the great Dutch post-Impressionist painter.

In fact, she has been dubbed "Grandmother van Gogh."

But Chang, who recently held an exhibition in Hong Kong to raise funds for village schools in Gansu, is not excited about her sudden rise to fame.

"I don't know who van Gogh is. There's no one named van Gogh in my village," she said.

Chang, who has not had any formal training, took to painting just three years ago after she moved to Guangzhou to stay with her journalist son, Jiang Hua.

Her interest in it was sparked when she did a pen and ink sketch of a remote village to explain to her granddaughter what one looked like.

Impressed by the sketch, her son Jiang, and his wife, put it on the Internet. It was the start of Chang's journey to fame.

"I really do not know how to draw," she said. Her natural talent, however, belies that fact. She has now completed 180 paintings.

One of her favorite paintings is of an old village house surrounded by decaying trees.

"It describes the agony and hardship of village life. Decaying trees symbolize the difficulties we faced," she said, not realizing that van Gogh too, lived a difficult life.

"I did not know how to express my feelings in words."

"So I draw to express my innermost feelings."

One of her paintings, Sunflowers, like that of van Gogh's, has captured the imagination of art lovers who say it is very reminiscent of the master painter.

Chang's total lack of knowledge of van Gogh is endearing.

"My sunflowers are full of vitality. But van Gogh's sunflowers lack water and soil, and they will all die," she said.

Another painting entitled Chang in Golden Dragon and Storm depicts a day in her life 30 years ago, when she and four of her children were caught in a torrential storm and had to be rescued by villagers.

"The children were crying as they were scared and hungry," she said.

Most of her paintings are of flowers, animals and life in the countryside.

"I still vividly remember what my village looks like. I don't need to think about what color should be used," she said.

Chang's works have also drawn foreign attention. A French photographer Klavdij Sluban was delighted to be presented with one of her paintings entitled, Guava Tree, by her son in 2003.

Many have offered to buy her paintings, but she refuses to sell.

"I will not sell my paintings. Many people and children just love my paintings. I want to make them, especially children, happy," she said.

Two of her children have completed university education, and the other three have graduated from secondary schools.

"I am very happy that my children have had a decent education," she said, beaming with pride.

(China Daily January 27, 2007)