Bio.

Renold Laurent is a Haitian artist currently based in Cambridge, MA. His dynamic and expressive paintings are rooted in imagined dialogue with his audience and between mixed media, cultural history, the present, and our collective future. He was born in Source Bretoux, a village at the foot of the Marbial Valley—a few kilometers from the city of Jacmel, Haiti. At the age of ten, Rénold began to draw and paint under the direction of his father, Maccène Laurent, a primitivist artist. Very early, he was inspired by the cultural life of his rural environment, including Rara festival music, Carnival, and the architecture of Jacmel.   

In 1995, in his quest to continue improving his painting techniques, he took many trips to Jacmel and Port-au-Prince to open his mind and learn more about other artists. It was through the books and catalogs of the Alliance Française library in Jacmel that he began to discover the works of Manet, Cézanne, Monet, Daly, Kandinsky, Klee, Pollock, and the names of great Haitian painters such as Hypolite, Tiga, Cédor, and Lazard; these research trips had a profound impact on his artwork.   

A few years later, he incorporated new perspectives and techniques into his paintings. He considers abstract painting to be the most expressive way to explore the extraordinary powers of the imagination. Laurent has collaborated with several cultural institutions in Haiti, and his paintings have been exhibited in Haiti, France, and other locations. In 2019, he received the Heimark Artist Residence Award from Brown University's Center for the Study of Slavery & Justice. 

Artist Statement

My work creates visual portals that invite viewers to see differently and enter a dialogue between materials, forms, histories, and lived experiences. Through painting and mixed media, I explore memory, resistance, and spirituality, treating each work as an open space where meaning is continually shaped. Each piece becomes a meeting place between the visible and invisible, between matter and emotion.

I use both traditional and unconventional materials, incorporating elements like fabric, charcoal, resin, or coffee grounds. In some works, acrylic paint merges with found fabrics to create relief paintings, exploring recovery as an act of repair and justice. This transformation of matter generates centers of visual energy, where light becomes a symbol of resilience and hope.

Rooted in my Haitian heritage, my practice weaves ancestral memory with contemporary realities. I connect historical narratives, fragments of everyday life, and reflections on social and political conditions, exploring how cultural heritage and displacement shape identity. In this space of tension and dialogue, art becomes a language of transmission, resistance, and reconnection.

Through the rhythms of life and the traces of history, I conceive art as a means of movement and transformation—where color, form, shadow, and light converge to open sensory and spiritual fields. By reclaiming and reimagining materials, I aim to restore what has been fragmented by displacement, creating acts of healing, belonging, and shared reflection.