(soft vibrant entertaining music) - I think I was an artist from the beginning when I was a child.

I have a lot to give, a lot to learn.

The more I learn, I feel like the least I know about the media.

(soft vibrant entertaining music) I think I paint for the next painting, the painting that will wow me.

And then when that happens, I will look back, and I say, "Oh my gosh, I did that and how I did it?"

(soft vibrant entertaining music) I am Carmen Bruhn and I am an artist.

I grew up in David, in the Republic of Panama.

My town was a small town, a small city, nice folks.

We all have a very good upbringing.

After high school, then I moved to the University of Panama to go to the school of architecture.

From there, I really realized going outside painting and doing drawings of the colonial architecture of Panama, that I have a strong sense that I wanted to become an artist too.

(soft pleasant music) I came to the United States in 1982.

I worked for an architect for a while doing models.

My background as an architect has influenced my work tremendously, because now I could see that I love the great pattern, the straight lines, windows, doors, buildings.

I don't want to put myself in the artistic boxes style.

I could be today a different person than tomorrow.

It depend on what I want to put on my canvas.

But I came to the conclusion that I love abstract, and my art is part of abstract and with a blend of symbolic realism, and I'm satisfied with that description.

(light upbeat pleasant music) I like to work in layers.

So I will paint layers of colors, let them dry and go.

Some may be transparent, other ones may be opaque.

Then I look, what elements of art do I really want in my painting?

Everything that I felt that day, I can put it in the canvas.

Then when I'm done doing that, I could go back and look for some nuggets, something that attracted me that I would like to repeat.

(light upbeat pleasant music) Once I do that, then I can think about my visual path, then I start refining the painting.

But the process is not one, two, three.

It can go back and forth.

I may be stuck sometimes.

I get stuck in paintings a lot.

Other times I paint and the whole painting just come so easy and it's just wow me, but some other times it doesn't happen like that.

(soft pleasant music) Living in Panama, I think I take it the tropical bright colors and the warm palette, but I also love the cool palettes of the ocean.

So I tend to bounce between warms and cools.

And living here in Detroit Lakes, I love color.

Our winters are so great.

They influence me, so I need all these bright colors to feel the warm and the happiness that I want to feel.

(soft pleasant music) I paint for the joy of painting, for being, discovering something that I have not seen in the canvas yet.

Working on my art, it just make me so happy.

I hope people take away from my work the feeling of happiness, the feeling of joy, the feeling of, yeah, it is every time I look at that painting, it make me happy.

It's a very good feeling to start your day.

So that's what I hope.

(soft pleasant guitar music) - [Narrator] Funded by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4th, 2008, and by the members of Prairie Public.