NICHOLAS ANGELO
FINE ART

When Prefete Duffaut talks about his past, his most vivid memories are of his unhappy childhood, a vision on the island of La Gonave, and countless trips over the mountains. These memories contain the seeds of the three leitmotifs out of which his paintings are composed and help explain their underlying meaning.

Brought up by an unkind stepmother, Duffaut withdrew into himself and escaped to an ideal world on paper. His little sketches and paintings helped him to overcome periods of despair. By age twelve he worked as a shipwright like his father. He had to cross the seemingly endless and imposing mountains to get to the coastal cities to work. After his marriage, Duffaut resettled in Jacmel, where he decorated his smaill house with geometric designs of stars, flags, and vases filled with flowers. He was on a job hunt in Picmi on La Gonave when the Virgin appeared to him in a dream, telling him to decorate the church walls with her image. Duffaut did as he was told, to the joy of the villagers. After he returned to Jacmel, American friends of DeWitt Peters' made his work known through photographs of his wall paintings. His association with the Centre d'Art then began.

He rarely paints subjects other than the Virgin (for Duffaut a representation of Erzulie), pictures of geometric designs, and imaginative constructions of mountains dotted with little houses, with the sea in the distance. Even his two murals for Holy trinity Cathedral--"The Temptation of Christ" and "The Processional Road" include these scenes. To some, his intention might appear to be a mere depiction of pleasant scenes. However, each painting is packed with didactic meaning expressing his moral, philosophical, and religious ideas.

The artist has always liked warm, vivid colors. In the past few years, he has also used blue extensively only to emphasize the yellows and reds placed strategically throughout the composition. Line, in his earlier paintings of minor importance, has become more precise and a major means of holding together his ever more complicatied and intricate constructions. He has never attempted to give volume and depth to his scenes.

Duffaut lives today in Port-au-Prince.

Image Size: 20" X 24" - Oil on Canvas