Featured FOLK ART? PAINTING; THRIFT STORE FIND - THOUGHTS?

I found this at a local thrift store. It is unsigned & unframed, which may be why it was so inexpensive ($4.95!), but I like it!
Unfortunately wen I showed my girlfriend she was less than impressed.
Now I'm wondering if I liked it so much because it's good - or for the $5 price?!
Any thoughts on it would be appreciated
PS - It is on art board
Thanks

 

I like it, but I think the artist's influences and notions of composition exceeded his technical expertise. I do think it is more informed than folk art. Whoever painted it spent some time looking at art.

 

Artist took quite a bit of care with the colors. There's more sophisticated technique here than the drawing suggests.

 

South American?

 

It’s interesting that it has a foreign feel to it but the only sign on the building ( on right side) is in English. Caribbean maybe? I like it. Very colorful! It also looks like the trees in the background are showing fall colors.

 

I was thinking Belize or Guyana since there's English showing. That could be totally wrong of course.

 

The people are very fair-skinned, which is rare even for people of European descent in Belize or Guyana.
To me as a non-American this has a very North American feel. The church and the white picket fences behind the women and to the left certainly look very North American.

 

That is an observation I was going to make. The whole thing has a dream-like quality for me. A bright sun, mountains in the background, a lake with a little island, which has a big tree. A steepled white church, little boats fishing on the lake.

It's also reminiscent of the sort of scenes I & others in second grade tended to paint/draw in our occasional art classes: a bright sun; fluffy clouds; rolling green land with a road leading into the distance; a red brick house with smoke coming out of the chimney. For the ambitious, a happy traditional family. An anglo-european US 7 year old's idyll.

And what exactly is the transaction taking place? The woman on the right is selling fresh fish from a basket, her head humbly bowed. Is she also offering tame birds? Are the other figures a well-to-do woman, her half grown daughter in striped stockings who would like to have a bird, & a younger brother?

And yet, both women have their hair tied in a scarf & the middle figure clearly has bare legs. Are both of the tall figures with head scarves local residents, one selling fish, the other, birds. Does the smaller size of the female figure, whose dress does not suggest patches, whose legs clearly have stockings, indicate her socioeconomic otherness & how she is viewed by the village women?

Then there are the little touches, such as the cluster of red flowers in front of the dove on the ground. I'm liking this more & more, but have no clue where & when it was painted. The style of the hat may be a clue.

 

And yet we don't say this about Marc Chagall.

 

It's not true about Chagall.

While OP's painting has its charm, it's clumsy compared to the work of a trained professional, nevermind a master.

 

Is it on stretched canvas or artists board? Can we see the back?

 

Artist board. I'll post pic when I get home

 

Here is front again & back taken in sun!

 

Chances are it's an amateur artist since it's on board. Very good for an amateur. Lots of intriguing images