About Painting – Not a Manifesto
Thinking about painting and then writing down what you have thought about is a daring undertaking, especially for a painter. Attempting to consider one’s own work in relation to the great artists of past eras and even some of the present might seem, if not presumptuous, then overconfident. Painting, however, has accompanied me throughout my adult life, both as a viewer and as a painter. Early on, I asked myself what the discovery of perspective by Filipo Brunelleschi in 15th century in Florence in the Renaissance art period had to do with my approach to painting. Likewise, I found it exciting to test whether Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s color wheel had a „sensual-moral“ effect, as claimed by the Privy Councilor, or whether the cool, clear color wheel of the Swiss painter and Bauhaus teacher Johannes Itten, which dates from the1960s, was more suitable. To this day I have not reached a final verdict, but the study of color theory has always helped me as a building block in the development of my painting. Seeing, looking at and studying important paintings of art history has been as essential as the banal knowledge of how to make oil paints or how to paint with egg tempera.
The history of painting has always fascinated me, because painting is something that has been with us since Cro-Magnon man began to paint his caves. Some of the oldest cave paintings date back to about 40,000 years ago, such as the El Castillo cave in Spain or the Chauvet cave in France. For these very early people, according to all that we know today, it was not a matter of decorating their homes, which as hunter-gatherers they did not inhabit for long anyway, but of exchanging messages and, if necessary, worshipping gods to help them hunt or raise their children.
(The entire text can be found in the book Frank Dömer Malereien • Paintings 2019 – 2024, which was published in 2025.)
