Luane Brauner

About the Artist

Luane Brauner is an East German born Artist. She started drawing in her early childhood, and as a teenager earned pocket money by selling T-Shirts painted with portraits of Jimmy Hendrix and other musicians. Such items were not available in East Germany, and in high demand.

Later on she was living with her husband and their three daughters in a beautiful gingerbread villa in the middle of a forest, miles away from the next village. Here, she was inspired again to pick up her childhood passion. When her children went to bed and her husband, a forester, went out to hunt, that was her time to paint and to charge her inner battery.

She taught herself through copying old masters, adding to her drawing skills by learning how to paint with oils as well as pastel and watercolor.

In 1995 Luane began to exhibit, and within 5 years she became quite well known. She was selling her landscapes, and people frequently commissioned her for portraits, animal and landscape paintings. In 2000 Luane took the risk of quitting her job, as the person in charge for forest and hunting at the council Nauen, to become a self-employed artist. By then all three daughters had left the nest, off to university to study.

From 2002 she extended her art-classes from town into her own home and taught all ages and techniques twice a week.

In the year 2006 her husband died suddenly. She lost not just him but also her home and art school.

Afraid to stay stacked in grief, she jumped again. Not used to travel, and not knowing the language, she arrived in 2007 in Golden Bay, New Zealand where she still lives.

Here she felt right away alive. Bewitched by this mesmerizing landscape, and welcomed by the warm-hearted Kiwis, she started to breathe again. Focused on adapting to a new culture and learning a new language, there was not much space for grief. She found a place to stay on a big farm, 630m high, where she could station her big House Truck and build a studio. To establish a life off the grid and be a hermit was not always easy, the coming and going for several years depending on visa issues. Commuting between two countries, with 18,000 km distance, was not just very expensive but also exhausting.

She studied Art and Creativity in Wellington and after just one year she could graduate with a Diploma. This was the start to fulfilling the requirements to immigrate to New Zealand.

A long immigration process followed, but finally New Zealand granted her Residency as an artist.

Many stories can be told along her journey, and in deep gratitude to her roller-coaster ride she is currently working on her illustrated memoirs about the time from losing everything to finding herself.

The adventures housetruck life up at Birds Clearing has passed. She now lives still in Clifton but a bit closer to civilization.