After 10 years as a hobby-painter, her daughters having left the nest, Luane saw the opportunity to do, to the fullest, what has become her biggest passion. “I quit my job in the council and jumped into my own business. We had lots of space and a big function room in the barn and I opened my own art school in 2002.” It sounds as if Luane had everything organised, but fate intervened again. She shares her story with us.
"I am a self trained artist, self-employed since 2000. I was living with my husband and three daughters, in a big, old forest-house in East Germany and I had a full time job. Renovating and gardening took a lot of time too and I was looking for something to charge my inner battery. I found a very inspiring book about the Russian landscape painter Iwan Schischkin, and started to copy some of his paintings. I then started making copies from other old masters, and soon I wanted to paint my own work. After a few years – in 1995 – one of my colleagues from the council came to see our old charming forest-house and was astonished to see all the paintings on the walls. Soon after they organised an exhibition and it all snowballed. I had more and more exhibitions, features and commissions.
I lived in the forest, in the middle of nowhere, finding my inspiration in nature, and so it is here in New Zealand as well. But when my first grand-daughter was born I fell in love immediately and started to paint her portrait over and over again, and so I became more and more a portraitist. It’s the beauty and the joy in life that I love and what better impression and evidence than to find it in faces, animals and landscapes.
Luane Brauner
