He has called home to a myriad of places, most recently Hadlyme, Connecticut. Born in 1950 in the Belgian Congo, the child of Russian emigres, Brechneff was educated in Switzerland, England and the United States. With roots deep in the Swiss Alps, he nevertheless spent three decades defining his painting style, in pen and ink, pastels, gouaches, watercolors and oils, on the remote Greek island of Sifnos, near Crete.