Mirjam Brückner

In the context of my artistic work, portraits play a special role. It seems to me that the portrait ─ more than other art genres ─ can bridge the distance between artists and their potential audience, because ideally the material and immaterial tasks of the portraitist and the portrayed subject melt together when they share at least a part of the creative process. I also love to draw and paint animals, mostly birds and horses, flowers and trees.
One of my preferred techniques is woodblock printing. Through a multifaceted process , I seek to bring out the essence of my subject’s personality. The very nature of the material of wood encourages powerful lines and the natural texture of wood tells it's own story, adding depth and mistery.
I was born 1rst October 1955 in Münster, Westfalen, into a restless wandering family. From 1974 on, I spent most of my life outside Germany. My art training took place outside the official institutions, my artistic life outside the markets, galleries or guilds. I returned to my birth country in 2018 and live at Berlin.

In 1974, she attends painting lessons at Florence, working with Roberto Ciabani. In 1976/77 she studies sculpture (con Rudolph Rooijackers) and etching at the Vrije academie Psychopolis Den Haag. In 1986 her work is shown in the collective exhibition Contemporanea, Bologna and in 1987 in the Biennale Giovani di Bologna. Since 2009 she studies Wood Block Printing with Umberto Giovannini, first at Faenza, in the Scuola delle Arti e dei Mestieri, later at the Opificio della Rosa, Montefiore Conca (Italy) where she participated in several intensive courses studying linocut, textile printing and copperplate engraving.
Workshop with Umberto Giovannini, in the Opificio della Rosa, in Montefiore Conca (Rimini )

Giovannini organized a personal exhibition of her work at Montefiore Conca in 2011. In 2012 she participates in the exhibit La xilografia italiana. Dalla mostra internazionale di xilografia di Levanto a oggi 1912-2012. (Italy, Germany, Chile). In 2015/16 she gets back to studying etching with Clemente Fava at the DLF.
Since 1983 she lives at Bologna, earning her money by translating and teaching German. She is looking for new ways of bridging the distance between artists and their potential supporters.