Raphael Drawing by Efka

I touch my first brushes in one of the last workshops installed in the village of Ecouen which housed artists like Charles-Edouard Frére, Paul Seignac and the Americans James Crawford Thom and Henry Bacon.
A At the end of my secondary studies at the Collège de Juilly, where the pedagogy of the Oratorians encouraged my passion for art, I joined the School of Fine Arts but felt that then, it taught more to "be an artist" than Being an artist I quickly escape from it and train directly through contact with artists by attending their workshops. A state of mind that I perpetuate today in my own workshop.
At the same time and for more than ten years I practiced mountaineering while creating numerous paintings of high mountains. Their sales will finance my passion.
In 1990 after a mountain accident, which left me with a weak knee, I returned entirely to painting. I then began to frequent the artistic world and followed several years of personal studies during which I refined my technique, specializing in trompe l'oeil and the restoration of works of art.
After a few test exhibitions in an associative environment, I present my works in galleries, firstly Art Linéa then the Yves Mugniez gallery in Paris. I worked for three years on “Trompe l’oeil and other entertainments…”, where I presented my most accomplished works.
In 1998 I moved to Ste-Eulalie-d’Olt where I opened my workshop -gallery in the old village school. Abandoning trompe-l’oeil, the landscapes of Aubrac inspire around forty paintings. It will be “Les Sortilèges de Brameloup”
It was during this period that I discovered an intriguing and confidential art, kinbaku.
Kinbaku is a Japanese art of bondage originating from martial arts (Hojojustsu), who strives to create a work of art of body and rope. I develop my own iconography by replacing traditional Japanese knots with interlacing and Celtic braids.
Leaving my brushes aside, I devote myself to photographing these “living paintings”.
And that is precisely After a Kinbaku session, it dawned on me what would become the synthesis of everything I had done up to now. At the end of this session the model rushed to his cell phone and revived him. The room was dark and the devices were still working. And what then appeared to me through the screen was a real composition by Georges de La Tour, emerging from time.
I then took back the brushes that I had put away. Because it is through painting and its ancient techniques that it seemed obvious to me to translate the electronic lights of this scene.
 The sale of five paintings, two of which were even before they were signed, and the order of a triptyque reinforced my vision of these new “Genre scenes of the 21st century”.

• Nationality: FRANCE
• Date of birth : 1961
• Artistic domains: Works by professional artists,
• Groups: Professional Artist Contemporary French Artists