Hertz Nazaire

Hertz Nazaire was born in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti and has been painting and sharing his love for art in Bridgeport, Connecticut for over 20 years. Working mostly with colorful oil pastels on board often depicting subjects influenced by Haitian Culture, History, and Life.

Nazaire was born with Sickle Cell Anemia a very painful illness which has motivated him to paint about pain and to strongly question a human’s ability to learn compassion and feel empathy which he explores and hopes to inspire in his art.

His award winning Sickle Cell Awareness series has been published around the world in medical books and magazines promoting education and awareness of the disease.

Sickle Cell is often extremely challenging for many warriors like Nazaire. He has been homeless three times as an adult, with the longest span of time surviving outdoors being over 18 months. Because he could not afford to pay his rent due to losing his job after being in the hospital too often for too long. These challenges are commonplace in the SCD community and fuel a lot of anxiety and depression, making it harder for a person trying to fight a painful disease like Sickle Cell Anemia. This is what drives the artist to create pieces that raises awareness about these issues faced by his community.

Nazaire has lost part of his eyesight due to complications during a Sickle Cell Crisis, but this has only pushed him over the years to continue to draw and paint with more purpose. Having limited vision shapes his art and creativity, affecting how he sees the world and how he creates a new composition.

Today he continues to seek new ways to express his art and continues to advocate and speak publicly for the much needed awareness of Sickle Cell Disease and Science education in his community.

His hope for his new coloring book series, "Finding Your Colors," is to be able to afford to send 50 coloring books and 50 coloring pencil sets to local Sickle Cell community based organizations around the world. so they can be gifted to a warrior fighting the pain on a hospital bed. And he hopes to challenge others to do the same, so that we all can learn to find our colors through fine art coloring books.