Patrick Eugène is a Haitian-American artist from New York, known for his large-scale figurative paintings and mixed-media works exploring identity, lineage, and resilience. Using composition and color to evoke emotion, his practice rests on themes of preserving heritage and encourages an intergenerational engagement with the past. Eugène is one of two U.S. based artists selected among ten international visionaries for the 10th anniversary edition of the Dior Lady Art Project, which debuted at Art Basel Paris and is available exclusively at Dior boutiques.
To examine how perseverance and cultural memory are passed down and transformed, Eugène drew on his Haitian roots to create three renditions of the Lady Dior Handbag. Referencing Haiti’s moniker as the “Pearl of the Antilles,” the bags feature bulbous pearls, patchworks of leather and textiles, including straw weaving, macramé, raffia stitching, and wooden beads. Pearls, long associated with elegance in fashion and at Dior, are reimagined here as symbols of ancestral strength. The motif also reflects the women in Eugène’s portraits, who wear pearls as modest symbols of grace and survival.
Ahead of the Dior Lady Art opening in New York, Eugène and I dug into the evolution of his studio practice, his move from Brooklyn to Atlanta, the influences that shape his work, his take on abstraction, the creative process behind the handbags, and the rich history of Haiti.
Samaira Wilson: I’m excited for the opening!
Patrick Eugène: It’s going to be dope.
SW: What do you think it’s going to be like?
PE: Some snacks, some drinks, and people taking a look at the bags for the first time. This one’s a little different. We’re going to have a talk with myself and Jessica about the bags and where the inspiration came from. I’m excited about it. LA was mad. You know, it was Beverly Hills, and it’s a whole different energy than Paris was. So, I expect New York to be a whole different energy of its own. We’ll see how New York reacts to it. Are you from New York?
SW: No, I’m from Atlanta, actually. I heard you’re living there now. I also noticed you had some pictures by Walker Bankson, that’s cool. I think we were at Bard at the same time.
PE: Yeah, Walker! Not only is a great photographer, he’s my assistant in the studio as well. We build things together, I’m doing some cool new framing. He’s building it with me. Walker’s my right hand man.
SW: Dude, that’s awesome. And you’re from New York?
PE: I grew up in Long Island, and I moved to Brooklyn. I was there for about ten years before I moved down to Atlanta.
SW: How is it different?
PE: It’s very different, my wife and I wanted to slow our lives down. Although Atlanta is not a small city by any chance, it feels smaller than New York. We would visit, she has family there and we would go down and hang out. And I was like, I could do this. I can slow life down a bit. Then when we moved down there, we got married, and we have three little boys now.
SW: Oh congrats! How’s your studio at the Goat Farm*?
*12-acres of a reclaimed cotton gin turned into an arts center / artist studios / exhibition / installation / performance space in West Midtown Atlanta.
PE: Yeah! I like the Goat Farm. I have a really nice space there. I think it actually informed my practice a lot. When I was up in New York, I was doing a lot more abstraction and experimental work, like assemblage, a little bit of everything, trying to find a cool new thing that might catch people’s attention. When I moved down to Atlanta, that didn’t matter as much. It was more about slowing down my pace and I got into oil paint in Atlanta, which I would have never done in New York because my mind was just moving too fast.
SW: Do you get good studio visits in Atlanta? Like, people coming?
PE: Yeah, yeah, recently we had some cool ones. Within the last month or so, we had Swizz Beats and Usher come by. A lot of people pass through Atlanta, you know, it gives them something to do that they probably weren’t expecting.
SW: True, everyone does pass through. Atlanta is a huge influence on culture, has legacies of artistry, and fresh perspectives, which makes it pretty irresistible. I read that you’d started painting later in life. Could you talk a bit about how painting entered your orbit?
PE: You know, I was working at 9 to 5. That wasn’t my favorite, but I was doing it because I was trying to be responsible. I have an older son as well, who just turned 20, and I was 20 when I had him. So instantly, I felt a responsibility to settle down and make sure I had something that could be long term and stable. I actually feel like I’m aging in reverse, those first seven years of doing that was taxing. I was working for J.P. Morgan, and it just wasn’t my type of job. Around the time that the economy was pretty much crashing like 2008-09, and I was trying to find an outlet for a different way to do things. I was picking up hobbies here and there, things to offset those pressures and that stress. Being in New York, I would always go to an art museum and have a bunch of friends that were dabbling into art, and I was like, let me try this art thing. Later, I converted one of the bedrooms into a studio and just started painting and fell in love with it. It took me about six months to quit my job and do it full time. I never felt anything like it before and I knew that it was my calling.
SW: Wow! Did you start by making abstract or figurative work?
PE: At first, I started figurative because I think I was just trying to figure out how to paint the face. A lot of it was trying to get as accurate as possible because I didn’t go to school, and I felt like that’s what they would probably teach you in school first. So, I tried to make my own curriculum and figure that out. There was a lot of documentary watching, a lot of book reading, and a lot of visits to the museum. I didn’t really understand abstraction at the time. But, when I did, that exploration became a spiritual experience for me. Using composition, color, texture, movement, and paint application to evoke an emotion, was almost like jazz music about lyrics.
SW: Yeah, I’m interested in that relationship between music and art. One person can see rock n’ roll and someone else can see jazz. I saw somewhere you said, you see Kompa, which is a genre of Haitian music.
PE: Yeah, Kompa is pretty much Haitian jazz. A lot of it is lyrical, but it always was just abstract to me. The music, the sound, and the vibes, was what moved me and growing up, listening to that in my family’s home, there was a warmth when I heard that play. It translates well to Miles Davis and Coltrane, you listen to these songs and then you build a story in your mind of what it is that they’re trying to say, because they’re not giving it to you in lyrics. It’s just a mood. It’s just a feeling. I think abstraction is finding a way to do that in the visual sense.
SW: How do you dress your figures or set your figures in space, without drawing from real life?
PE: I just go for it. I have this thing where I’m stuck in a certain time period. I’m sort of an old soul, the Harlem Renaissance is really inspirational to me. There was a period of time in Haiti, in the 1940s and 50s, where people carried themselves and dressed a certain way. That was really intriguing to me, so I stick to those elements. They have a nice posture and confidence, so I dress them as such. It feels like I’m trying to slow down time a bit, I think things are moving so quickly that this is my way to encapsulate a period of time where I thought the family structure was strong. Although African-Americans and Black people in general had to deal with a lot of BS, they carried themselves a certain way, with a certain pride. Whether it was a Sunday’s best or they were able to afford to dress that way every day, you would never know. I think that’s something that is really rich in our culture into the diaspora, and I want to capture that.
SW: About your figure’s expressions and posture, something I noticed a lot was their pensiveness, they’re always in deep thought. Which takes a lot of forms because some are smoking, a lot of them are sitting, and others look tired. Your work is more ambiguous than it is didactic. I kind of have to use all the clues I can. Body language and setting is really key to understanding the moods you’re depicting, like metaphors. How do you construct metaphors and how do you set moods?
PE: For sure. I mean the pressure that the world puts on us is taxing, right? These figures, a lot of them, may be in a moment of rest and just kind of hanging out in that contemplation and reflection. Some of them may have a bit of anxiety. But, I’m happy that you said that because my whole goal is to kind of leave the painting there enough for you to relate with it in your own way. As opposed to giving you too much information in the painting, seeing yourself in those moments is how a connection is drawn.
SW: Yeah, true. I’m doing my MFA in Painting at Pratt right now and we’re talking about how you can see the painter’s hand and eye in their work, by way of what the painter chooses to include and how they apply the paint. Since body language is an important signifier in reading your work, you can tell what things have shaped your understanding of moods. From the elbows, knees, hands, and the weight of the body.
PE: Thank you. Thank you. I’m happy that that resonates.
SW: Yeah, and the settings that you choose, they’re ambiguous and sort of blurry. I notice you make sure there’s a wall, a floor, a couple items of furniture, and plants. These are kind of your ingredients for a painting. It reminds me of a domestic void.
PE: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, something about my process and when I lock in and I get in my flow state, I feel like I’m really in conversation with family members that I haven’t met, and I think something about keeping that void and that blurriness, as you put it, makes it feel like it can be placed at any time in history. Flowers are always around for the most part, tables and chairs, always around. If I threw a flatscreen TV in the back, it kind of changes everything. Or even if I threw in a refrigerator, the style of the refrigerator is going to tell you exactly the time period. I think there’s something about leaving some of that in mystery and allowing the piece to breathe and kind of transcend time. The painting always tells me to stop. Kind of like whatever flows at that moment is what stays. There are times where I would actually leave a whole limb off of a person, like an arm may not be there or leg might not be there. On some, Henry Taylor type stuff. And that was just because the painting told me to stop.
SW: It’s really interesting how you’re doing figures in an abstract way, because nowadays painters are on a spectrum of doing hyperrealism or going towards outlines, silhouettes, or shadows.
PE: Over time, if you look at artists as they grow older, things start to get more simplified. I used to paint the whites and the eyes of every figure, and then one day I just removed that and it made a world of a difference. It changed everything, just that simple decision. Even now, in some of my more recent works, the line work in the face is not as clear. I like the value of reducing. I feel like there’s something important in that. It feels like, hey, if I can capture that same emotion and not give you the entire thing, then there’s something about this composition that’s done enough, right? I’m not trying to force too much, but I want to still get that feeling out of it. In my practice, it feels like I’m getting closer and closer to whatever it is I’m trying to achieve.
SW: Absolutely. So, taking all of your process / approach, and looking towards the Dior Lady handbag project, how have you had to engage with a different set of materials? How did you bring your painterly language into this opportunity?
PE: Yeah, so that was a totally different way of approaching things, rather than being in my studio or with Walker hanging out in the background, I was working with a team of people. But, what was really surprising, was that they kind of let me do whatever I wanted to do and they supported it in any way. There wasn’t anything that they couldn’t make happen, they were ready to go for it. When I was approached with this, I felt like I could have easily taken a painting and said, how do we turn this into a bag? But I felt like, if you give me the opportunity to be a designer– I’m gonna get in my design bag. I’m going to see if I can actually pull that off.
SW: How did you make the design choices? When you’re applying paint, it’s a little bit more intuitive and instantaneous, but with this, it’s something that has to be reproduced. How did you make sure it still had that spontaneity?
PE: Yeah, so I made a bunch of watercolor sketches, and the watercolor pencil allowed me to create my lines the way I wanted to and allowed things to feel loose and vibe the way it wants to vibe. I found three or four that I was really comfortable with and my brother-in-law who went to SCAD, generated a three dimensional mockup of what I drew. So, I was able to present to them an entire package, full of drawings and digital renderings. I wrote an essay that explained why this was important to me, and why I wanted to go this route. I sent them images of Haiti in the 1940s and 50s, women adorned in pearls, and I wanted them to understand that this is the energy I wanted to push out. Once I sent that over, they flew over to the studio from Paris with a bunch of materials and different versions of what I suggested to see what would really look good in person. From there, we took the silhouette of the Lady Dior bag and started literally paper clipping different materials on. Figuring out what would work and what wouldn’t, then they took it back to Paris. They worked on it for a little bit, and then flew myself and my wife over to Paris to double check. Even at that time, we’re still able to make slight adjustments. So, it was really a fluid process, no pushback at all.
SW: How seamless! Are the bags something your figures would maybe wear?
PE: For sure. I mean, in this process, I even thought about what the clothing design would look like. I thought about them as pieces that I could see Haitian women being proud of because of the materials that are being used. Leather and textile patchwork, wooden beads, macramé, raffia embroidery, and straw weaving. I think of my sisters, my mother, and my wife. I don’t wear bags personally, so I’m looking at what they would probably love to hold. My mother took interior design pretty seriously growing up, so I always saw how she mixed and matched things, and she’s obsessed with tablescapes. She has her own Instagram page with just like these insane tablescapes that she does. And so I’m always like–
SW: What is a tablescape?
PE: You know, designing a dinner table to fit a certain theme. So, like, if there’s a holiday theme or it could be just a full theme in general. I would see all these different materials, these textures, these colors working in unison to make a beautiful table. And that’s how I grew up, so when I’m thinking about the materials that she would love or I’ve seen, I’m thinking about her way of approaching things. Honestly, this is all an ode to them, my ancestors and the future ladies of my family.
SW: Do you feel like the bags have personas?
PE: Interesting. I mean, I didn’t necessarily separate them. I just felt like they were just one, you know? One represents the sea, one represents the land and one represents the royalty people embody. They’re all part of the Pearl of the Antilles.
SW: Gotcha, and what conversation are you having with the pearl?
PE: There’s a bunch of things that made the Pearl make sense for me, you know, obviously that we’re talking about a period where slavery in Haiti was the most brutal slavery on this side of the world. They were overworked. There were so many resources there, and at one point, Haiti was the only country really exporting coffee and sugar. Even now, at this time, there are things that are being used around the world that can only be found in Haiti and Haitians knew the culture was rich. They knew the land was rich, but when others came onto land, they were like we’re going to take all this away.
SW: It was colonized.
PE: Yeah, and then there’s something about the resiliency of the Haitian people where these slaves who were trying to be brought on to Napoleon’s army, decided, no, we’re not doing that. Actually, we’re going to defend ourselves. And they freed themselves, right? That’s like unheard of. But, the Pearl itself is a beautiful natural material. I wanted to reclaim that because I know the richness of the culture, and I know the people are just as resilient and powerful. So, I took the pearl back. This is ours. In addition to that, it just made sense because a lot of the ladies in my work wear pearls. Dior also loves pearls. So, it feels like a marriage of all that together.
SW: Totally. Plus, I mean this is a partnership with a French fashion house. I think the relationship between what your bags represent and that truth is very subtle. It’s layered.
PE: It just allows conversations to be had beyond this collaboration, like sparking ideas with other people who are on the ground trying to make change and trying to inform others. I think that that was my goal with this. Like, let’s talk about something that’s larger than myself, so we can now start doing some work outside of this collaboration. And thus far it’s been that, in Paris, I got to sit down with a bunch of ambassadors and think about some plans with some organizations and things that we can do together. Yesterday, I was with the Haitian Consulate General of New York. We had dinner. I had a conversation last week in L.A with an organization called Haitian Spotlight L.A, where we had a talk with everyone in the community, young Haitian people who are in L.A. doing great things, came into the room and we all had conversations about what we’re doing and how we’re trying to help this narrative get out there. And tomorrow, I have another conversation in Brooklyn with another Haitian community program. So, this was my intention from day one. Like, let’s do this collaboration and see how we can spark some interest and see where we can take it from there. It’s really about just uplifting my people, really. That’s it. To give us something to be proud of, and let the broader world know that we’re here, and we’re doing some cool things and then naturally, these conversations are going to come.
SW: And in a way, this is a big part of being a Black artist today. Like, how can you address history or subvert expectations in productive ways?
PE: Yeah. That’s kind of how I approach my whole practice. Just bringing a human respect, you know, just respecting us for who we are and then maybe learning a little history.
SW: Last question. Your work gives viewers room to project themselves into the narratives you’re painting, I wanted to ask, what is your message to future generations entering them?
PE: Honestly, if I can draw from my own personal upbringing and my experience, walk in who you are and be super proud about who you are. It’s important to do research and explore who you are more than anything, and once we build that confidence within ourselves, that’s when we’re going to be the best. When I think about me having four children, you know, I have four boys, I want them to be super proud from day one about who they are. I don’t want any hiding. Don’t be ashamed. Don’t let the media steer you one way, be who you are to your fullest. I think that’s really where I’m at with it. We’re all humans, we’re all people. Every household feels familiar at some point. We have the same trick, we do the same things, you know? So, when you hear all the Haitian this, Haitian that, it’s very interesting how many people don’t know the history of Haiti. You can be on this side of the world and still not understand what they did. I mean, it literally changed everything. And if I didn’t have that confidence in who I am, I wouldn’t move the way I’m moving right now. I wouldn’t approach this opportunity by leading with the Pearl of the Antilles. I would have done something totally different, but I think just gaining this confidence and feeling that power, allows me to inspire and push others in the future generations to have these conversations as well. So, I think it’s living in your truth, really.
SW: I agree. The art of noticing is integral to a lot of that too, because you’re not letting things die. You’re bringing the needle through, you’re making sure you catch what was passed on to you. I feel that.
PE: Exactly. 100%. 100%.
