Garoute was born in Port-au-Prince on December 9, 1935. He began modeling clay at age 10 and joined the Centre d’Art at 12. He later studied in Paris and became an art teacher and therapist.

Tiga and Maud Guerdes Robard founded the Saint-Soleil post-naïve school of Haitian painting. The school was born when they offered farmers in Soisson-La-Montagne, a rural area near Port-au-Prince, drawing and painting materials. Out of the movement came such painters as Levoy Exil, Louisiane Saint Fleurant, St-Jean, and Dieuseul Paul to name a few. The movement drew the eye of French author André Malraux who dedicated a chapter to it in his book L’Intemporel.

In the late 1980s, Tiga also created Kaytiga, a gallery and cultural center where he taught children and adults art through his Rotation Artistique (Artistic Rotation) method. The method consisted of letting pupils roam freely from clay to drums to paint to ink. Kaytiga had various addresses in Pétion-Ville, a suburb of Port-au-Prince, over the years and eventually moved to Delmas, another suburb of Port-au-Prince.