3 November 2025
Every so often, an artist needs to step away from familiar ground to discover something new about their own craft. That was precisely the spirit behind this year's painting workshop of the German Mouth and Foot Painters, held in Regensburg in 2025 — a week that invited seven accomplished artists to leave behind the comfort of the familiar and step boldly into the world of abstraction.
A Journey Into the Unknown
Under the guidance of artist and art instructor Tanja Riebel, the workshop set out with an ambitious goal: to break free from classical models and gain new perspectives through experimentation with colours and forms. For artists accustomed to representational painting — capturing landscapes, still lifes, and figures with careful precision — the invitation to embrace abstraction represented a genuine creative leap, one that demanded both courage and openness.
Abstraction, after all, asks something different of an artist than realism does. It strips away the safety net of recognisable subject matter and asks instead: what happens when colour and form are allowed to speak for themselves? It was this very question that Tanja Riebel posed to the participants throughout the week, guiding them toward an entirely new relationship with their own artistic instincts.
Seven Artists, One Shared Adventure
The workshop brought together seven remarkable participants: Thomas Kahlau, Antje Kratz, Markus Kostka, Selma Aman, Dirk Bennewitz, Waldemar Merz, and Werner Mittelbach. Together, they spent the week exchanging ideas, tackling creative challenges, and engaging in genuinely collaborative work — a rare and valuable opportunity for artists who often work in relative solitude to instead learn directly from and alongside one another.
Throughout the week, a palpable sense of camaraderie developed among the group, as each artist brought their own history, technique, and artistic voice to a shared creative challenge. Watching seven distinct artistic personalities converge around a single theme — the exploration of abstraction — created a dynamic and generative atmosphere, one where a chance comment or observation from a fellow participant could spark an entirely new direction in someone else's work.
Learning to Say More With Less
A central lesson of the week came through Tanja Riebel's demonstrations of how reducing forms and colours can, counterintuitively, intensify the mood and emotional impact of a painting. Rather than adding more — more detail, more colour, more precision — the participants learned to explore the opposite instinct: paring back, simplifying, and allowing space and restrained colour palettes to carry emotional weight.
This idea of reduction as a source of strength rather than limitation opened up entirely new possibilities for expression among the group. Artists accustomed to rendering every detail of a scene found themselves instead asking which details were truly essential — and which could be released in service of a stronger, more evocative composition. It is a lesson that speaks to something profound about the creative process itself: that constraint, far from stifling creativity, can often be the very thing that unlocks it.
A Safe Space for Bold Experimentation
What made the Regensburg workshop so successful was the safe and supportive space it created for genuinely diverse artistic exploration. Over the course of the week, participants produced an extraordinary range of work — from intense, emotionally charged still lifes to sweeping abstract landscapes and striking, impressionistic animal depictions. No two artists arrived at abstraction in quite the same way, and that diversity of outcome was itself a testament to the openness and flexibility of Tanja Riebel's teaching approach.
Crucially, participants were encouraged not simply to imitate a particular abstract style, but to bravely explore new paths departing from their own usual painting techniques, and to find their own individual way into abstraction. This distinction mattered enormously: rather than producing a uniform set of "abstract" works that might have felt imposed from outside, each artist emerged from the week with a personal, authentic interpretation of what abstraction could mean for their own artistic voice.
Growth Beyond the Canvas
By the workshop's conclusion, it was clear that the 2025 painting workshop had been a resounding success — not only in terms of the artwork produced, but in the personal and artistic growth experienced by each participant. For artists who paint with their mouth or foot, the physical and technical challenges of their craft are already considerable; to then ask them to abandon familiar techniques and venture into unfamiliar creative territory required real bravery. That every participant rose to this challenge, and emerged with new tools, new perspectives, and renewed creative confidence, speaks volumes about their dedication to their art.
More than a technical exercise, the week became what organisers rightly described as a true adventure in the world of painting — an experience that pushed each artist beyond their comfort zone and reminded them, perhaps, of why they fell in love with painting in the first place: the thrill of discovery, the joy of experimentation, and the deep satisfaction of watching a new idea take shape beneath the brush.
Creativity Without Limits
The title of this year's workshop — "Creativity Without Limits" — proved to be more than a fitting name. It captured the very essence of what unfolded in Regensburg: seven artists, guided by an inspiring instructor, choosing to set aside the familiar and step fearlessly into new creative territory. In doing so, they demonstrated once again what has always defined the mouth and foot painting artists' community — a refusal to let any limitation, physical or artistic, stand in the way of genuine creative growth.
As the participants returned home from Regensburg, they carried with them more than new paintings. They carried new perspectives, new techniques, and a renewed sense of what is possible when artists are given the space, the guidance, and the courage to explore beyond the boundaries of what they already know.
Source: VDMFK News