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Elizabeth
Brunner is eighty-seven this year (1997). Unfortunately,
since a few years she is bound to wheel-chair and bed by
extreme arthritis. This sickness crept on her over the
years.
I have been thinking about the strange ways she often
found herself in during her life. Thinking of the situations
to catch the right spirit of people and surroundings for her
paintings (sitting crossed legs any length of time,
disregarding the weather); but mainly of her inner feelings
and respect for the subject she painted and which she wanted
to transmit to the beholder of her creations (painting with
her fingers and kneeling for long hours). It has also to be
mentioned that Elizabeth and her mother travelled, as a
matter of principle, third class on the Indian railways. And
they walked with bare feet as usual on the hot and stony
grounds. Although they often stayed and moved in exalted
places, Elizabeth imbibed her mother's ways of a strict
discipline, a vegetarian diet, and an almost meagre general
way of life.
Considering all this, fifty-five odd years long, I am
not surprised about her physical condition today. Elizabeth
is always warning me to take good care of my body and not
neglect it as she has done. By about the end of the
nineteen-seventies, Elizabeth did not paint any more.
I might not see certain things in and around her
properly, pin-point characteristics because she is, after
all, a Hungarian lady by birth, and I do not understand her
mother tongue. But I trusted my intuition and followed the
vibes I felt when in her presence. Besides we speak one
mutual language, English.
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