Haitian history – Mitchell Pluto

Sanite Belair, Haitian Héroïne of the Revolution of 1803 by François Cauvin 2021.

François Cauvin is an acclaimed Haitian artist based in Montreal. His iconic portrait of Toussaint Louverture with a guinea fowl forming his hat is the cover image of Sudhir Hazareesingh’s Black Spartacus: The Epic Life of Toussaint Louverture. The famous portrait has now travelled far and wide as this book won the Wolfson Prize, the UK’s most prestigious history prize. Recently he has completed portraits of Haiti’s revolutionary women, including Sanite Belair and Marie-Jeanne Lamartinière. With funding from the Glasgow Knowledge Exchange Fund, Cauvin will speak with Rachel Douglas at UK museums and the Houses of Parliament on the topic “Visual Aftershocks of the Haitian Revolution.”

Nouvelle toile par François Cauvin ” Marie Jeanne Lamartinière “
Acrylique sur canevas. 2023.
Contrairement a ce que le noirisme duvalieriste nous a fait croire , Marie Jeanne Lamartiniere etait metisse ,d’un pere francais et d’une mere africaine. Demolition des mythes pour une nouvelle Haiti sans prejuges.

”Black Spartacus” by Sudhir Hazareesingh. Painting François Cauvin

I find inspiration and magic in François Cauvin’s works. Many of his paintings can make the viewer more open to the mysteries of nature. This begins as a desire to remember our self while dreaming.

As a native of Haiti you grew up in a family of artists, musicians and poets. Who were they and how did they inform you?

Yes. I had many artists and musicians in my family. My uncles and aunts. also my mom was a fashion and dresses maker. My sister Marie-Hélène Cauvin is a visual artist too… but first they were musicians. Major influences included composer and virtuoso pianist Ludovic Lamothe and Occide Jeanty who was a composer, trumpeter and pianist.

Woman and nature are reoccurring themes in your work. what is it about those mysteries that inspire you?

Since I was raised by women, mother and sisters, I think it plays a role in my choice of painting them later I was initiate in the tradition of the Goddess of love.

How do you approach Haitian religious symbolism? is it based on traditional Vodou or your own formula to remember the universal self? or a little of both?

I think my work is based on the Haitian Vodou tradition. Since most of my work are from dreams of the spirits, messages from them. I do have dreams of my previous lives .

How would describe the relationship you have with the universal mind, dreams and subconscious process? how do you find images to paint?

The images are from dreams most of the time. The ideas sometimes comes from my mind which hold and received them. They are from a place that I don’t know. You can receive images and ideas without knowing its happening.

in your artistic interpretation what are the crossroads, twins and snake represent? is there one archetype you consider a guide?

What I can answer for sure is that the snake is my true initiator before I was an initiate in the tradition. I dreamt once about the crossroad Master. He was skinless dancing in the air.

*The Queen Mother, Goddess of the broken hearts/protector of the souls*
This painting shows clearly, the appropriation of the old myth of Isis by the Haitian Vodou from the Catholic Church dogma.

what writers have influenced you? what other influences changed your perception of the world?

I really love the South American writers and the magic realism school. Colombian novelist, Gabriel García Márquez. Guatemalan poet, Miguel Ángel Asturias. Cuban novelist, Alejo Carpentier. Haitian writers too that include Jacques Stephen Alexis, Jacques Roumain, Laennec Hurbon, Jean Price Mars and Villard Denis. I loved reading French novelist Marguerite Yourcenar… but what really influenced me was my past in the Haitian country side and Port-au-Prince. Also what my father taught me in that time about nature and plants.