Folk art encompasses art produced from an indigenous culture or by peasants or other laboring tradespeople. In contrast to fine art, folk art is primarily utilitarian and decorative rather than purely aesthetic.

As a phenomenon that can chronicle a move towards civilization yet rapidly diminish with modernity, industrialization, or outside influence, the nature of folk art is specific to its particular culture. The varied geographical and temporal prevalence and diversity of folk art make it difficult to describe as a whole, though some patterns have been demonstrated.

Antique folk art

Antique folk art is distinguished from traditional art in that while it is collected today based mostly on its artistic merit; it was never intended as a category to be art for art’s sake. Examples include: weathervanes, old store signs and carved figures, itinerant portraits, carousel horses, fire buckets, painted game boards, cast iron doorstops and many other similar lines of highly collectible "whimsical" antiques.

• Artists (7)

See also:

• Arts: Visual Arts: Assemblage Art (37)
• Arts: Visual Arts: Thematic: Folk Art (68)
• Shopping: Crafts: Folk (23)

• Primitive Kool Art
  primitivekoolart.com
  Collection of folk, outsider and self-taught artists including Jim Sudduth, Mose and Annie Tolliver, Roy Ferdinand, and Ody Saban.
• Creative Heart Gallery
  self-taughtart.com
  A gallery for self-taught artists, represents embodies elements of the visual traditions of the same cultural groups whose musical traditions gave birth to such forms as Blues and Old Time music.
• Kicking Bull Gallery
  kickingbullgallery.com
  Featuring new and antique decoys, and folk art.