SKEPA - La femme du verger

Unique artwork – Certificate of authenticity provided.
Original work on linen canvas, wooden keyed frame.

I am Guillaume Skepa, painter and sculptor, born in 1978, graduate of the École des Beaux-Arts de Lyon and cofounder of the BAFO movement.
I started with graffiti in the early 1990s, with Jone Hopper. That’s where I come from. There I learned to take my place, to search for my style, and to express myself without waiting for someone to give me permission. More than thirty years later, it still part of me.
Since then, my painting has changed. I’ve tried, learned, failed, started again. What I do today comes from all those years, from encounters, from work, and from what I live. I didn’t arrive here overnight, and I continue to search.
Tools change, ways of creating change too. We live with the means of our time and we won’t go back. But that doesn’t excuse anyone from being honest about what they do. For me, signing a work is owning it. It’s respecting the people who look at it and not telling them a story that isn’t theirs.
We’re served a lot of rhetoric, a lot of images, a lot of things we should believe without questioning. That makes me want even more to defend a place for painting, for the freedom to make and to think. A place where one can still offer something that matters to oneself and share it with others.
I believe we, artists and visual artists, have a role to play in this. To inspire, to provoke a reaction, to bring a little hope to an era that lacks it. I want to continue building something in this sense, with my story, my convictions, and the work left to be done.

Website: skepa.fr
Instagram: @skepa_gallery