Red Flowering

St. Pierre was born in Kenscoff on February 10, 1929. For most of his life he was a farmer and only began painting in 1972, when, according to Ute Stebich in her biography of him, in the 1978 catalog of her landmark show at the Brooklyn Museum, he watched his neighbor, the painter Michelle Manuel at work, and decided to try it himself. St Pierre painted the inside and outside of a modernistic rough stone structure on a hilltop in the mountains of Kenscoff. His patron, the renowned Haitian architect Albert Mongones, built him the studio. It was circular with glassless windows and a round opening at the very top to let in additional light. St. Pierre can be described as a true untrained, naive expressionist who, during his life, was disdained by the art establishment in Haiti as "decorative". Dismissed by established galleries, St. Pierre sold his work directly to the public from his small studio.