Felix Bronner: biologist and painter

Atop the broad doorway of Felix Bronner's painting studio are three commands written on crisp white cards in thick black marker: "search," "investigate," and "stay with it." These are words for a scientist to live by, especially one who, like Bronner, has made significant contributions to his field. But for Bronner, those words are about art, not science. Bronner, 85, is a professor emeritus at the University of Connecticut whose distinguished career investigating calcium homeostasis, transport and metabolism continues today. He is co-editing the third in a five-volume series, Topics in Bone Biology, published by Springer, UK. And he is an accomplished artist working in oils with nearly 1,000 paintings to his credit.Bronner first picked up a brush in the late 1970s, taking classes at the local high school, then the West Hartford Art League, eventually moving on to private lessons. He's more than a recreational painter -- at a teacher's encouragement, Bronner entered his first juried show, the prestigious Silver Mine Show, in 1985, and was accepted. Since then, he's won awards for painting and drawing, had dozens of one-man shows, and been chosen for several other juried shows.

On a tour through the West Hartford home he shares with his wife Leah, Bronner points out favorite works. A still life with a guitar and a vase from 1979 is "the first painting I did that I think was half worth anything," he says. Three- and four-foot square abstracts mixing rectangles, circles and stripes in muted shades of blue, purple, green and gray; small collages of paint, paper, and type in hot colors and vibrant shapes; softer-edged paintings blending abstraction and cityscape -- all that, and more, are on display. Kandinsky and Matisse are among his inspirations, along with "the whole abstract expressionist school." As the tour makes clear, Bronner has explored many styles in the course of his career in art, and continues to make new discoveries, using a kind of experimental approach. For example, after completing several large collages with paper cutouts and oil paint, he decided he wanted to do something less "busy" and devised a new form: two panels of solid color with a third panel of collage in the middle. After painting a few of those, he decided the delineation between the solid colors and the collage was too sharp, and began allowing collage forms to extend into the solid panels.

Mary C. Farach-Carson, director of the Center for Translational Cancer Research at the University of Delaware in Newark and Bronner's co-editor on the Topics in Bone Biology series, says he displays a similar nimbleness of mind and flexibility as a scientist. "Felix is a lifelong learner and that is a very incredible thing," she explains. "He is a senior scientist who just voraciously absorbs new information."Bronner is currently collaborating with Boris Slepchenko, an associate professor at the University of Connecticut Health Center, on modeling the metabolism of lanthanum. "He appreciates the rigorous logical analysis of experimental data based on applying mathematics to model things," says Slepchenko, who notes that Bronner's earlier work was unusually quantitative for its time. Bronner, who was born in Vienna, was among the first to use radioactive calcium to investigate the mineral's metabolism, as part of his PhD thesis at MIT. At least 11 of his papers have each been cited more than 50 times, including one paper that's accumulated nearly 200 citations. He retired from UConn in 1989, but maintains an office there while spending weekends and one or two weeknights painting in his studio.

Bronner says his work in science has clear parallels with his work in art. "As a scientist, you look for relationships. You do the same thing in art."But Farach-Carson says Bronner has never been one to wear his second profession "on his sleeve." She was unaware of Bronner's artistic bent until, years after they first met, she noticed he was carrying an artist's portfolio. She asked him about it, he showed her some of his work, and she wound up buying several pieces."I think all scientists are artists," Farach-Carson notes. "They're both creative fields. I think sometimes people forget that."Anne Harding mail@the-scientist.com Images: Bronner with Playing with Shapes, Oil and Collage on Canvas 48 x 24 2006; On the Dangerous Edge of Things (Browning), Multimedia Collage on Paperboard 13-1/8 x 11 2006; Shining Through, Oil on Paper 23 x 18 2006; Strange Design, Collage on Matboard 5-3/8 x 6-3/4, 2003. Photos by Phillip Fortune.Links within this articleFelix Bronner http://www.felixbronner.comL. Defrancesco, "The delicate balancing act," The Scientist, March 4, 2002. http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/12905/Topics in Bone Biology http://www.amazon.com/Engineering-Functional-Skeletal-Tissues-Biology/dp/1852339624Wassily Kandinsky http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wassily_KandinskyHenri Matisse http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MatisseMary C. Farach-Carson http://www.udel.edu/bio/people/faculty/mcfarach-carson.htmlBoris Slepchenko http://www.ccam.uchc.edu/people/slepchenko/slepchenko.htmlSlepchenko, BM, Bronner, F, "Modeling of transcellular Ca transport in rat duodenum points to coexistence of two mechanisms of apical entry," Am J Physiol Cell Physiol, 281:C270-C281, 2001. http://www.the-scientist.com/pubmed/11401850F. Bronner et al, "An analysis of intestinal calcium transport across the rat intestine," American Journal of Physiology, May 1986. http://www.the-scientist.com/pubmed/2939728