Brigitte Bruggemann

Growing Wings: A Story of Becoming Brigitte Bruggemann

Born in Germany during World War II, Brigitte Brüggemann's childhood memories of wartime trauma and poverty strengthened her but have deeply affected her spirit. Her love of art offered a guiding light, helping her overcome obstacles in her search for spiritual identity and her voice as an artist.

After living in Paris, London, and the Bahamas, she immigrated to the United States, became an art student, an art professor, and defied the "starving artist" myth with her joyful, colorful abstract paintings. In Growing Wings, she describes her journey, her process of painting, and her work with color and light to find her voice. Her journals of a solitary life, her travels to distant places and cultures, her responses and insights to masterpieces she sees and how they influence her work, provide inspiration.

Praise for Growing Wings
"By keeping to her upfront, intended narrative of illustrating process and the events leading to her artist-self being free in the world, Brigitte Brüggemann manages to avoid the cinematic temptations of over-colorizing her life with the very real explanation of how her roles as a wife and mother had to be undone in order to find herself."
-David Sawyer, artist

"... Brigitte writes of gleaning a farmer's field for potatoes as an American fighter pilot swoops down strafing the earth, causing her with her mother and sisters to flee into the forest. Now she is in New Mexico, an accomplished abstract artist of imaginative form and brilliant color. ...."
-Joseph Bottone, poet