Gerard Fortuné does not know the year in which he was born, but it was in the early 1930s. He was born and still lives in the Montagne Noire neighborhood, Petionville, Haiti. As a child he recalls working in his mother’s garden. After having worked as a cook and at odd jobs most of his life, he began painting in the 1970s/early 1980s.

“I never learned how to paint. It came to me. Thanks to Jesus. And when I make money, I never spend it by myself, I share it with my family because I never learned how to paint. It just came to me.”

A prolific, self-taught artist whose work is creative, imaginative and unique, he found a receptive audience among diplomats, journalists and other expatriates in Port-...