When looking around, I realized that a lot of erotic art was done by men and was missing female voices, so I decided to share my vision. Also, I always try to add a touch of humor to my pieces, as I see sex as something playful and sometimes even funny. When I started, my portfolio was filled with sexy work—but one of the things I realized very early on was that I couldn’t do that type of work commercially. I tried a few times, but it just never worked, and I ended up frustrated by the result. It’s the one aspect of my work where I absolutely don’t want to compromise, so I made it a rule not to create erotic work for commercial clients.
Once in a while I do a new piece for myself, though, like Orgy.
Create: When you were a kid, drawing your female nudes, how were those drawings received? What did your family think?
Favre: My mum loved it. She kept all my drawings organized by year, so that’s how I found them a couple of years ago. There are some really disturbing ones in there, believe me. There is one of a girl dressed in this S&M attire—apparently I was nine when I did it. I asked my mum, “Did you think I was—I don’t know! What did you think?” And she was like, “Oh, you know, you were nine. I just thought it was the hormones kicking in.”… Very French in a way.
Being French Algerian, my mum had a tougher upbringing than I did. I think she felt proud more than anything else, proud that I had a strong female voice and that I wasn’t scared to explore sexuality in my work. I was brought up in a very open family, so I’ve always perceived sex as being something funny and beautiful, rather than a taboo.
I still remember, I gave 69, which was another erotic piece I did, to my grandma at Christmas. It took her a while to understand what was happening on the paper—and when she did, she burst out laughing and told me it was beautiful.
Create: So were you a very artistic child?
Favre: My mum pushed me to draw from a very young age, and it’s something I’ve been obsessed with since then. Growing up, I drew every single day. My family was a bit New Age and didn’t have TV, so my brother and I had to find different ways to entertain ourselves. For me it was playing, reading, and drawing.
My mum was a stay-at-home mum and was always creating things. But the truth is that she could never get around to selling any of it—she struggled with the business side of it and kept giving her work away for free to friends and family. She could create all these amazing things, but she never made a living of it.
By the time I was a teenager, an artistic career didn’t seem viable at all. I was quite materialistic and headstrong back then, but I remember wanting to earn decent money and have a stable job. I never felt art was an option. So I kept drawing as a hobby but decided to pursue science for my A levels, followed by engineering prep school. I loved physics and mathematics back then and wanted to become an engineer. But after a couple of months in prep school studying like a maniac and barely seeing the light of day, I realized I was never going to be happy doing that as a living.
In high school, I loved the fact that I got to do a bit of everything: French literature, philosophy, English, sciences—but when I arrived in this postgraduate course, It was all about science, forget the literature, forget everything else. I missed all those other things, and I quickly felt frustrated. I was 18 and didn’t know what to do with my life.
The only thing I really knew how to do was to draw, so I decided to apply to art school. I chose advertising rather than fine art and still had no intention of becoming an artist. I thought I was going to become an art director in an advertising agency. I have never spent a day working in an ad agency.