The Painting study programme educates visual artists who create their work and conduct their research from a painterly perspective: to them painting as a discipline is an important starting point. Facing a world that is shaped by a complex interplay of cultural, conomic, political and technological developments, art and artists continue to take position, combining a personal perspective and a professional attitude. The programme provides a context for artistic research into the meaning, position and challenging potentialities of painting in the broadest sense in contemporary art and society. Artists taking part in this programme seek to achieve a deeper understanding of and higher level of specialization in their artistic practice through playful experiment and research. The investigations are not restricted to the materiality, act, idea or field of painting alone: they can be described as practical and theoretical investigations into the workings and potentialities of the image, objects, space, perception and the imagination in a broader sense.

The graduate of the Study Programme Painting demonstrates

Making & Conceptualising
• art works, which take the field and traditions of painting as a starting point or as an important point of reference.
• a body of work which is rooted in and can be related to a personal artistic vision and system (consisting of a personal set of artistic goals, sources of inspiration and theoretical starting points).

Experimenting, Innovating & Researching
• the ability to gather meaningful material and sources relevant to the own artistic practice, by means of a well-documented research process.
• results of experimental and practice-based investigations into the workings of image, experience and imagination, both through the work itself and through a well-documented research process.
• the ability to independently investigate content (motives, topics and themes), materials and techniques or working methods for the purpose of developing the work.

Theories, Histories & Cultures
• the ability to position, by means of a written thesis, the own artistic practice in relation to existing and new theories and ways of thinking concerning the field and traditions of painting as well as to broader cultural, social and theoretical contexts relevant to the    work.
• to contribute with the developed work and thesis to professional knowledge concerning the field and traditions of painting in particular and the international art practice in general.

Technical, Environmental & Contextual Issues
• the ability to deal with technical and material issues in the realisation and presentation of the Graduation Programme in such a way that technical issues offer no impediment to the creation, realisation and expression of the own artistic concept.
• full awareness of and ability to work with site-specific and other environmental issues in the presentation of the Graduation Programme.

Re-thinking, Considering & Interpreting the Human Condition
• the ability to reflect critically, both in the thesis and in a public presentation, on
- the semantic possibilities of the own material and work.
- the personal working method and development.
- overcoming problems of stagnation in the working process as a whole
- the meaning and position of the field and traditions of painting in the art world and contemporary society.

Communication, Collaboration & Interdisciplinarity
• the ability to present the graduation work in a careful and well-considered manner in a public presentation.
• the ability to present an artistic vision in a written and illustrated thesis using a form that is appropriate to the work and research framework.
• the ability to discuss and indicate in clear terms, both verbally in a public presentation and in writing through the thesis
- the artistic choices.
- the artistic aims and theoretical starting points of its own work.
- the desired position to assume with regard to general and professional audiences.

Initiative & Enterprise
• to take full responsibility for the development, realisation and presentation of the Graduation Programme.