DAFEN Oil Painting Village in Longgang District has over 8,000 painters, but only one of them is a foreigner.

John Hobby, the first foreign painter to display his skills at Shenzhen's world-famous oil painting village, has become a local celebrity after starting to paint regularly at Dafen's Art Window Showroom six months ago.

"I met many interesting people. They asked me questions, and asked to take photos with me," said Hobby, from New Mexico, the United States. Hobby paints three to five days a week at the Art Window Showroom, a studio provided free of charge by a man surnamed Huang.

Hobby, 57, prices his paintings at between 8,000 (US$1,000) and 45,000 yuan apiece, about half of what he charges in the United States. As he feels the price is too low given his accomplishments as an artist, he has adopted an archaic Scottish pseudonym, Duncan MacRae, for his work in Dafen.

The price is still too high for local customers, however. Hobby said several Chinese people had offered to buy his paintings, but they could not agree on the price.

Hobby is not discouraged. He has a grand plan: he wants to hold an art show when he has completed 15 or 20 pieces. He said an art show organizer from Shanghai had invited him to hold a show.

Hobby said he had joined the studio by chance. As an art lover, he started visiting Dafen in 2003, one year after he came to Shenzhen to work as an English teacher. There he met Huang, who invited him to paint in the village.

It takes Hobby about 80 minutes from his home in Futian District to Dafen in Longgang by bus. But he loves painting there. He describes the village as "the forefront of the art movement in China."

Hobby is now spending less time in Dafen because he has been hired as a part-time art teacher by the Shenzhen Children Fine Arts Training Base of the Children's Palace. Parents love to take their children to his class, where the kids can learn English and painting at the same time.

Despite knowing only basic Chinese, he has no difficulty communicating with the children. The children speak some English, and "art is international," said Hobby.

Hobby has been painting his whole life and even owned a medium-sized gallery in the United States, but he did not study art in college. In fact, he holds a bachelor's degree in anthropology and a doctorate in archeology from the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom. Hobby said he did not like the way art is taught in college, because there are "too many theories and little practice."

Editor: Wing