Longing for Home Key to Finding Powerful Visual Voice

I first met Rene Dimanche Jr. through his ocular fine art at the Urban League Black Fine Art Exhibit. Later I learned he is a mulct histrion as well. I saw him execute the function of Saint George Wilcox in the First Run Theater production "The Dressmaker of St. Francis Street" written by Mario Farwell and directed by Jim Meady.

Janet: Rene, I had a sense that you transport a yearning for place within you and you are searching for that through your art. Americium Iodine on path at all?

Rene: Yes, this yearning of mine started after college. I did not cognize it would get as a strong pulling through the arts.

Janet: You work masterfully in a assortment of picture styles as you seek for a voice that that volition express best what your psyche desires to say. It looks as if portraits and still lifes...and maybe even portraits and still lives tied to your homeplace of Republic Of Haiti might be a topographic point you are going. Could you state us more than about this?

Rene: "Finding my voice." How can Iodine depict what this is all about for me? All Iodine can state is that it is that thing that people talking about when they state "you'll cognize it when you see it" or "I just cognize that's the 1 and don't inquire me why" I am getting near to what I believe to be the way to take.

A large portion of me loses my country, Haiti, dearly. Republic Of Haiti is a topographic point that I did not have got the privilege of knowing really well. To a certain extent a large portion of who I am is pretty well hidden from me.

Somewhere along the manner I have got almost lost contact with my Haitian roots: the people, the culture, the music, the country. With that in mind-I have got a strong feeling that volition be my interior journeying in art-to trip a duologue between me and my state Haiti. Until then I will go on to research surface attributes-like color, shapes, texture-until the voice acquires so loud that it must be responded to.

Janet: Yes, that's what I feel. That through your fine art you reconnect to home-both the place you came from and a place within yourself.

I'm interested in connection, home, family, arts, and culture. What I was really drawn to in your narrative and the narrative of your fine art was how these things came together. Anytime an creative person is looking for his voice, I be given to believe its about personal identity and a hunt for place, somehow.

Rene: Precisely correct. My work is a Negro spiritual and earthly hunt for a voice, place, identity-by first claiming Christ's triumph over sin/death and then our relation to the land we long for (its civilization and people).

Janet: Rene, so, this hunt for personal identity and perhaps even a hunt for place...how have that been for you?

Rene: Identity, topographic point in Jesus Of Nazareth our Jesus and where we are from, my hunt of who One really am and where I am from...these subjects came into focusing when a girlfriend of mine challenged me and said that I was not a Black individual to her-because I was from Haiti. While I disagreed with her in many levels, she was right about the fact that I am Haitain-American not Black-American. Then I realized I knew small of my country.

Janet: All of your work is good, but so separate in tone of voice and style...and I saw you really hitting pace with the portraits and still lives as you travel back to your roots in Republic Of Haiti as well...Do you experience this is the way you are going?

Rene: My works are a hunt and not settled yet. I am gravitating towards portraits/still lives for the most part. I trust to work larger in improver to doing little works.

I'm starting to read more than in depth about regional art. Republic Of Haiti is alone in the sense that much of it is still in a non-modern state. A batch of people in Republic Of Haiti are pushing large clip for a modern layout in all things. Yet a batch of its beauty is in its sense of old clip civilization and life style such as as immature male child horseback riding mule, a adult male by a mountain side tending his little veggie farm by a stream, and women carrying large handbaskets of fruits on their heads. My work is following a definite patterned advance towards a kingdom not known to me yet. I just necessitate to go on to dig.