September 20, 2026
Still Painting at 81: The Enduring Fire of Levoy Exil
Born in 1944, Levoy Exil has painted for over fifty years — and at 81, he still paints, carrying the Saint Soleil spirit from the mountains of Fermathe to the world.
Who he is
Levoy Exil was born on October 19, 1944, in Soissons-la-Montagne Fermathe, Haiti — a village in the mountains above Port-au-Prince where the spirit world was never far from daily life. He began painting in 1972, and a year later joined the Saint Soleil workshops founded by the artist Tiga (Jean-Claude Garoute) — a radical experiment that put brushes in the hands of mountain-dwelling farmers with no prior exposure to art and invited them to paint what they saw in dreams and in the Vodou spirits around them.
The Malraux visit
The world noticed. In 1975, the French novelist and statesman André Malraux traveled to the Saint Soleil community, recognized the artists as conduits of spiritual expression, and devoted a chapter of his final book, “L’Intemporel,” to the movement — with Levoy Exil’s artwork on the cover. In 1977, Exil’s work appeared at the World Theater Festival in Nancy, France. Over the five decades since, his paintings have been shown and collected internationally, yet his subject never changed: the Loas, the suns, the birds, the eyes and serpentine forms of Haitian spiritual life, rendered in pointillist compositions of astonishing density and color.
Still painting
Now 81, Levoy Exil is still painting. The hand that learned its craft in the Fermathe workshops of 1973 continues to layer dot upon dot, sun upon sun — proof that the Saint Soleil fire was never a moment but a lifelong practice. Collectors who acquire his originals are not just buying a painting; they are taking home a living chapter of Haitian art history, still being written.