Gabriele Baumgartner

2019

The artist captures the morning atmosphere on the shores of Lake Millstatt, the seasonally changing light that bathes the Salzburg mountains around Altenmarkt am Zauchensee in a very special coloring every time, items of clothing hanging on hooks in the studio and the floral beauty of arranged flowers in glass as motifs in her painterly works on canvas and paper. In her series of works, which often span several years, she repeatedly explores the landscapes, objects and flowers that interest her and captures her vision and perception of the motifs in the changing light situations and moods on the canvas. Sometimes she focuses on a view or a detail, other times she tells of the impressions surrounding her in a wide section. In doing so, she manages to outline the essentials with her concisely reduced strokes of paint, while at the same time increasing the luminosity of the colors and leaving plenty of room for her own imagination by leaving the canvas and paper "standing". The painter narrates her experience in her works and allows the viewer to immerse themselves in her pictorial world so that they can develop their own view of the essence of the landscape or still life.

Brigitte Mikl Bruckner does not fit into any genre. However, in her mental attitude and the way she repeatedly takes up a motif, capturing it anew in different lighting moods, one is tempted to think of the French artist Paul Cézanne and his many depictions of Mont Sainte-Victoire and his still lifes. Both artists are characterized by the frequent elaboration of a subject and thus the artist stands in a great tradition, which she, however, makes completely her own and counters with a painterly lightness that sometimes even tends towards abstraction. She is a painter whose views often become painted poetry and who also touches us as viewers on this intellectual level with lyrical aphorisms.