About Tafy LaPlanche from Le Pouf Art

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I am an Afro Latina portrait artist based in NYC. I paint unique and vibrant portraits for unique and vibrant people!

At the age of thirteen I was diagnosed with type one diabetes. I was considered to be one of the older patients and did not have priority over the Nintendo 64. I was given paper and pen instead. My days at the hospital were filled with drawing people as they passed by my room. This prompted my mother to put me in an art school. However, I was placed in a school where they only spoke Mandarin! There I learned to draw portraits and paint landscapes. Despite the language barrier I realized how art in itself was a universal language.

As someone of Haitian descent, there were interests in my art skills and possibly becoming a Haitian painter. The pressure to be someone slowly made me dislike painting landscapes despite my skills in it. During pre college I went abroad to Tuscany for a change of scenery. It was here when I had my canvas and paints out, overlooking a stunning landscape, when the sound of buzzing surrounded me. Moments later I realized I got stung by a bee because I couldn’t see out of one eye. I WAS ALLERGIC! My eyelid had blown up.

An old Italian woman came to the hill where I was, and offered me to come to her home to remedy the bee sting by placing an onion over my eye. Naive and hopeful I followed. As I watched the woman interact with her family and go about her daily tasks, I realized there and then my passion for telling people’s stories through portraiture. From creating portraits I could communicate an entire story about someone without having to say a word. And to connect despite where we may come from.

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Le Pouf Art is my gallery and studio space. It houses my original paintings along with limited edition prints. Studio visits and showings are available by appointment only.
Painting sessions are available on IG live Saturdays @ 11am EST.

Shop the "N/um" Collection

The healing dance is the principal ritual of voodoo. The ceremony is aimed toward giving spiritual and physical health to suffering people. Illness is seen as the evil influence of spirits of death. While the dance progresses, it becomes more and more intense until the healer-dancers go into a state of deep concentration and then they are able to cure people. The dancer has an object, the "n/um" in its stomach. This "n/um" travels across the spine until it reaches the skull. There it stops and explodes in the brain. This explosion is the sign of a rebirth and the reason why the skull is the symbol of a new life oriented toward the right way according to the good spirits of the ancestors.