Ellie Lescot                    Caleb Mentor                                      Samo                       

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Elie Lescot and his paintings

By Hansy Marcelin

    In a country like Haiti where visual art is omnipresent at every street corner, in the busy tap-taps of Port-au-Prince, at the market square and in every home, it is a rare privilege for a painter to stand out from the panoply of artists that form the astronomical constellation of Haitian arts. To be compared to greats like Bernard Sejourne, Jean Claude Castera and JeanRene Jerome is an honor much like a professional basketball player being compared to Micheal Jordan and Julius Erving Johnson, or a musician whose name is mentioned in the same sentence as Beethoven or Bach by critiques. Such is the case of Elie Lescot whose name is often mentioned as having been passed the torch to carry the legacy of the School of Beauty. The art of Elie Lescot , by its purity of form, expression and of composition, by its sensible attributes in the construction and execution, possesses all the characteristics common of all the painters( his predecessors or contemporaries) grouped under the School of Beauty which started in the 1950s as a dream to change the wide perception of Haitian arts as naïve. Before then, the spectrum of plastic art in the country was dominated by the strong presence of the primitive painters who boomed into the world of arts after the opening of the Center D’Art in the 1940s under the direction of Dewitt Peters

Elie Lescot, born in 1961, is the grandson of a former head of state whose name he also bears. He often speaks highly of Raoul Viard, the man he credits for having guided his first years of apprenticeship in drawing and painting. Over the years, Lescot’s work has evolved into mastery of the genre and his executions   often go beyond the imagination and the content they tend to suggest. One main subject of Elie Lescot’s reservoir of work is his depiction of women with swanlike neck in various themes. He refers to them as virgins by their grace, chastity and purity or as goddesses by their cosmic grandeur, all the while displaying the sensuality that characterizes the gender. Voluptuous lips, sleepy or moonlike eyes, long swanlike necks in curvy or erect position, a rose or two, sensual fingers, all seem to suggest a poetic composition with acrylic on plywood, the medium of choice used mainly by the artist applying generally a monochromatic scheme of colors, a strong identifiable characteristic reserved to his credit.  “Anacoana”, one of his latest works, on view last December 2006 at the Queens Museum of Art as part of the celebration of Jean Claude Garoute’s legacy, is a rendition reminiscent of the great Queen of the Cacique of Xaragua, who waged war against the Spanish conquistadors during the Columbus era. Ultimately, she was cowardly captured and killed by Nicholas Ovando, in 1503. Anacaona means golden flower in the language of the Tainos, the peaceful indigenous inhabitants of the island of Haiti. She was the wife Caonabo, king of the cacique of Managua, also killed by the Spanish conquistadors.

In this painting, Lescot employs his signature monochromatic texture of blue applied meticulously with the queen as the central subject of the work. She appears gracefully surrounded by a garden of lilies in the forefront. In the background, the arrival of three Spanish ships seemed to be threatening her paradisiacal dwelling. The variation of the blue scale creates the fluidity, transparence and clarity often present in the works of the painters of the same genre. The composition as a whole creates a very complex mood. The smiling queen depicted in her sublime beauty bears the scares on her right cheek comparable to those born by Our Lady of Czestochowa, symbols of her struggle. The luxurious blue implies the fantasy of heavenly peace, whereas the menace of war by the Spanish suggested by the three ships is imminent. This painting was inspired by a tumultuous trip Lescot took under the Duvalier’s regime  with a group of friends to the beach of Leogane, town  on the southwest border of Haiti where the original capital of the island was  located. It was also home of the great queen Anacaona where she ruled for many years until her death.

Another masterpiece of  the artist, one of great historical proportion that sets  Elie Lescot as an iconographic master of his genre and generation is ”Catherine Flon”   done in 2004,

a vantage year in the life of the artist in  terms of artistic production  of  superior quality at all 3 levels of aesthetic qualities……….

Elie Lescot’s style can be categorized as iconographic surrealism. Subjects are carefully chosen as symbols and mixed in the balance of his composition to convey hidden messages of love, compassion, freedom, peace and suffering. Women bust is a recurring subject in many of his work; however no two are ever the same or ever conveying the same theme.  The characters in Lescot’s paintings all seem to dwell in celestial abode or under water kingdom, seldom on Earth. One case, however, took exception to the norm. In 2004, Elie Lescot fell in love with a banker in Long Island by the name of Darrah. She was beautiful, newly divorced, and full of life. He was also in the same exact situation. It was love at first sight, a match made in heaven. So he ambitioned to paint her in a spectacular execution entitled “Princess Darrah’. In this painting, she has attained royalty status as the title suggests. The hat she wears, an accessory in royal formal female attire, is adorned with flowers   elevating her to a level of supreme beauty only reserved to divine beings in a fantastic world. Her broad shoulders occupying the entire length of the painting make her larger than life. The boats in the background suggest that they have embarked on an ambitious love voyage, a rather surreal endeavor. The sea is calm; the boats are still. The clouds, stricken by lighting, explode in an effusion of pink, the color of love.  Life seems to be at a stand still to behold Her Majesty, The Princess. Emotionalist aestheticians would have no reserve agreeing here that “Princess Darrah” is a classical case of a plastic outpouring of genuine emotions.

 He is an avid collector of Haitian arts. His collection includes works of some the most well known painters like Rose Marie Desruisseaux, Wilson Bigaut, Jean Rene Jerome, Henri Dubreuil, Henri-Robert Bresil, Jacques Valbrun, Raoul Viard,   C. Blain, Ernst Louizor, all of whom he had known personally and had had a chance to interact with at various stages in the development of plastic arts both in Haiti and abroad. His work is well sought after by collectors and friends all over the world. He is one of a few Haitian painters living exclusively of his art; and he has, by some fortune, escaped the label of “starving artist”. As a child, he bought his first bike by selling his art to tourist, after his father refused to get him one as a form of punishment for his unruly behavior.

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