Early Work

Notes from the Artist...

“The works from [the 1980s] share the rather unusual problem of incorporating two styles in one image...In truth I felt that these works were an important innovation and development in the history of the Haitian naive pictorial style...I was well aware that the public for Haitian art craves this type of work--paintings with explanations rather than sources. However, I was dissatisfied with it because it confined my role to that of an illustrator and commentator. And so, in 1985, in New York, I began to modify my approach to the problem of the spiritual in art. In my opinion, the illustrative is not compatible with the ‘authentic’ in art, although it seems impossible to discern where exactly each begins or ends...In a world where art is a simple matter of marketable styles, the Haitian and, by extension, the whole Afro-Caribbean body of culture seems too complex to deal with in an ‘authentic’ manner.”

- Paul Gardère, A Brief Account of My Special Relationship to the Art of Haiti