Frantz Lamothe

His family left Haiti for New York after his father took part in a failed coup against the Duvalier dictatorship. Lamothe grew up in Brooklyn. By sixteen he was living on the street, and the trains became the only surface large enough for what he wanted to say.

He painted under the name Freddy. The work was loud on purpose: flat blocks of colour, figures drawn in one continuous line, no interest in blending or polish. It was built to be read at speed, from a platform, by someone who had eight seconds to look.