My Zafer paintings style have, most of the time, a realistic perspective. Perspective is a drawing technique in which the viewer can distinguish several plans in a painting and get a feeling of distance although the painting is a flat surface.
When I started painting in 1986, I was already in love with “classical” landscape paintings. Painters like Maurice Ménardeau, Max Boullé and Roger Charoux were my heroes and enriched with their influence, I started oil painting. It must be said that I am a self-taught artist, and I never followed any art courses before the age of 53 and never had the joy of enjoying Fine Art studies. Everything I learnt came from watching other artists’ paintings (often from very close) and slowly but surely progress with my own art. Many young artists see landscape painters as “has been” or walking anachronisms. Mauritian contemporary art tends towards abstract paintings and the landscape painter becomes scarce and is rapidly ageing! Many times, I asked myself whether I should have followed a more “modern” and abstract path, but I realised that my happiness went through landscape paintings, and it was not possible for me to go against my passions.
When I created the Zafer style in 2003, I was looking for a different approach to landscape painting and to keep the door opened on “classical” paintings, I included a realistic perspective in my Zafers. This perspective can be realistic or voluntarily distorted. Once the painter “tames” the perspective, he can make the viewer travel through his paintings, travel through his Zafers.
