People on Sascha Brawer

Bühlstrasse

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I had never painted a night scene, so one evening I went out to try, right around the corner from my apartment in Bern, at the intersection with Bühlstrasse.

Bern’s streetlights today are plain cool-white LEDs. Before painting, I therefore tinted the photo yellow myself to mimic the warm light of the sodium-vapor lamps that were common in the 1970s. I just liked the effect: everything appears in a strangely saturated orange; headlights blur into streaks; a storefront disappears into the shadows; a passerby crosses the scene right in the middle of this light. For me, color is the central element in this painting—even though the street doesn’t look anything like that anymore.

Overly Attached Girlfriend

Thu, 27 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This one joins my Memes series — internet memes reimagined in oil.

Overly Attached Girlfriend is built around one unblinking stare into the camera, captioned with lines that turn ordinary affection into something a few notches past healthy. I’ll admit I never quite got the joke, though: if anything, I think people should care more about each other, not less. Sure, there’s a line where caring tips into something else — but crossing that line isn’t funny either, just concerning. So the whole subtext of this meme is honestly lost on me.

Success Kid

Mon, 24 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This one joins my Memes series — internet memes reimagined in oil.

Success Kid started life as a 2007 snapshot of a toddler on a beach, fist clenched, looking improbably pleased with himself — it went on to caption a decade of online “mission accomplished” moments.

People react to this painting in two very different ways: some see a cute, determined little kid; others feel a bit uneasy, reading the clenched fist as a stand-in for toxic masculinity. I’m firmly in the second camp. Painting is usually meditative for me — I rarely feel much of anything while I work. This one was the exception: I had a genuine, negative reaction to the image, and it stuck with me the whole time I was painting it.

Disaster Girl

Sun, 23 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This one joins my Memes series — internet memes reimagined in oil.

Disaster Girl is the 2005 photo of a young girl smirking in front of a burning house, endlessly recaptioned to place her calmly watching over one disaster or another — one of the internet’s most recognizable memes.

I painted this one mainly as an exercise in older oil techniques I hadn’t tried before — hair, skin tones, and smoke each behave very differently on canvas, and I wanted to get a feel for all three at once. The eyes gave me more trouble than I expected, and I can already see where I’d do them differently now. But I’m genuinely happy with the skin: building it up through several thin, semi-transparent layers, the way older paintings often were made, gives it a subtle shimmer that a single opaque layer just can’t produce. Still plenty to learn, but this one taught me a lot.

Mittelstrasse

Thu, 03 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This is Gelateria di Berna, an ice cream parlor on Mittelstrasse in Bern, a few minutes’ walk from my apartment. I painted it on a bright summer day — the kind when every table outside is taken and the line spills onto the sidewalk.

What I find interesting is the wall on the right. In reality it carries a big piece of graffiti. At first glance it looks quickly sprayed on, but it is so carefully done that it is almost certainly a commissioned work. I copied it line for line. In oil — an even slower medium — it came out a touch more precise than the original itself. That friction between an everyday format and a gallery medium is the whole point of my Memes series — this isn’t a meme, obviously, but apparently I can’t resist chasing the same clash everywhere.

Fùxīng Lù

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Fùxīng Lù is a quiet street in Shanghai’s old French Concession, all plane trees and small shops, with a coffee shop every few doors. One of them had a big glass front, and the room behind it looked nice, so I took a photo through the window with my phone and walked on.

I didn’t look at it again for years. When I finally did, going through old travel pictures, one thing jumped out: the place was full, everyone packed in around tiny tables — and half of them were staring at a phone. So was I, technically. That’s how the photo got taken.

Schaffhauserstrasse

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

After meeting a friend in Zürich one afternoon, I was walking back toward the station when I passed Kafi Freud on Schaffhauserstrasse. People were sitting outside in a bright wedge of sun, coffee cups on the little tables, and the whole scene had a warm, easy glow to it. I took a photo from across the street and painted it later.

I ended up cropping the faces out of the frame. To me that makes the picture more interesting — you still get the leaning-in, the gestures, the shape of a good conversation, without needing to know whose it is. I might turn it into a series one day: faceless people, chatting over coffee.

Shinjuku-eki

Mon, 24 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

On Unsplash I found a freely licensed photograph by Eutah Mizushima: a woman waiting on a subway platform, with a blurred background. It looked like a good opportunity to learn how to fake motion blur in oil.

I painted with two different whites — zinc white, cool and slightly gray, for the hazy background, and titanium white, warmed up with a touch of chromium yellow, for her pullover in the foreground. The photo was taken at Shinjuku Station in Tokyo, which gave me the title: “Shinjuku-eki”, Japanese for “Shinjuku Station”.

Woman in a Leather Jacket

Mon, 24 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

After experimenting with tools in oil — I liked the technique a lot, but found the subject deadly dull — it dawned on me: people are far more interesting. I’m generally fascinated by 1920s art, especially New Objectivity, and wanted to try a portrait in that style.

In an exhibition, I had seen Lady in Fur, a 1925 painting by Wilhelm Lachnit. I didn’t want to paint an exact copy, though — I wondered instead how she might look today. I don’t know much about the woman herself, but she was plausibly a flapper, to use the English term for the Weimar Republic’s modern, liberated women.

Anna Gabbioneta, after Christian Schad

Mon, 24 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A study after Christian Schad’s Anna Gabbioneta (1927), made as a technical exercise.