AN  UNLIKELY ARTIST

Rainer Breit

Rainer, who claims to be one of the world's first baby-boomers, was born in Germany on VE Day 1945. Escaping war-torn Berlin in search of a nuclear-free future promising opportunity and adventure, his family emigrated to Australia in 1951

As a member of the Red Onions, Melbourne's most popular band of the early 1960's, Rainer enjoyed some colourful teenage years, and despite topping his school in Art, managed to graduate in Engineering at Melbourne University.

A diagnosis of terminal cancer in his mid-thirties changed his approach to life. Rainer retired from the workforce at forty to tick off the bucket list. Armed with Pareto's Law of time management, he set out to involve himself in as many diverse endeavours as time would allow - from chocolate manufacture and fish-farming to garbage truck manufacture and architecture.

Establishing Curlewis Winery in 1997, Rainer became an influential

winemaker and is now regarded one of Australia's pinot noir pioneers.

Throughout these diverse endeavours Rainer always found time for composing and recording music, and especially for painting. In fact he estimates that he has been painting on and off for sixty-seven years without ever producing a large enough body of work at any given time to warrant a public exhibition. His work is informed by large canvas American Abstract Expressionism and Chinese etherealism. His compositions are drawn from nature and as a life-long scuba-diver, the Underwater gives him much inspiration.

At age 70 he knuckled down and became a full-time artist, establishing a studio on the Bellarine Peninsula, Victoria and another in Port Douglas, Queensland. He also has dedicated gallery space at his old winery's bistro "Appellation" in Curlewis.

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