The artworks of Franz Brandner have their roots in the European currents of the last century. Strolling through a selection of his paintings, however, the viewer senses a silent but vibrant life force that would have had no place in the era of the Post Impressionists. Rather, the unwavering force of pure nature emerges from the slabs of rocks and even from the delicate blossoms of the azaleas which populate his paintings.
Indeed, the purity of the natural world is the source for the artist’s paintings. No figures or self-portraits reside here. One caveat must be proclaimed, furthermore: the nature we spy in these works must be accepted on its own terms; it is a powerful and living entity that cannot be regarded through our own desired image. In the painting “Provence” (2014), for example, set within the tranquil tones of a wooded area beside a placid river, the dense grouping of trees, like soldiers in their blue uniforms, suddenly and shockingly confront us up close as we approach and examine their environment from left to right. Perhaps this scene is not so peaceful after all when we invade their private space.
Rocks reminiscent of Cezanne, due to their massive gray (not reddish) square shapes, appear in several of the artist’s works. And yet, they are not painted for our enjoyment; they are simply the strong anchors for the dark, twisting, growing trees that are making their way up the mountain slopes by hanging on to these rocks as their lifeline. Broad brush strokes affirm their strength in paintings such as “Mountainside”.
Trees, the symbol most widely used in art and literature to attest to the inextricable connection between Heaven and Earth, are the living subjects of various paintings by Brandner. Some trees offer up their shimmering white “Spring Blossoms” and recall Monet, one of the first to also paint in the out-of-doors. But Brandner’s trees not at all delicate; they are solid witnesses to the passage of time, and not poetic images of simple sentimental sweetness. The autumn trees in “Forest” exude the cool smell of wet leaves on which passers-by have tread, leaving not flame-red and sunshine yellow leaves, but the defiant leaves of a fall afternoon. Much like the avowed message of the American poet Robert Frost, who also often invoked restless trees of various sorts to relay his pensive poetic conclusions, the trees in Brandner’s works call up our own personal experience of the difficulty of living with dignity as a true person, and of our duty to persevere. What Frost said of the purpose of a poem, Brandner might say of his paintings: to give the beholder “a momentary stay against confusion.”
One final observation about these artworks lest we think only of the difficulties of living in the present: Brandner also reveals a hope for a more pure and happy world, as expressed in other living creatures of nature, such as birds. In “Foundation Day”, a pair of white cranes seemingly prepares for a new life together as they raise their outstretched wings to take flight. Or, are they just now alighting before the distant white palace illuminated by shafts of light from the heavens? More reminiscent of Oriental works than of European paintings, this type of painting uses the white birds (as before trees were used) to allude to an unbreakable and reciprocal connection between the spiritual and the physical.
Surely, the works of artist Franz Brandner provoke reflection not only on the themes and techniques used in his paintings, but also on his message of active and steadfast purpose, as evidenced in the interconnected physical and spiritual forces felt in the purity of nature.
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