Découvrez une interview de Dominik Mayer
A few weeks ago, Incendium, Dominik Mayer’s artbook (which we at Caurette published in collaboration with Spiridon), won the Imaginales Award for fantasy illustration! 🏆
For our partner Thomas Olivri (from Geek-Art), this was the perfect opportunity to ask the German illustrator a few questions and give you a closer look at his portfolio! Their interview is right below, so sit back, relax, and grab a cup of coffee. ☕
Enjoy the read...
Interview conducted by Geek-Art
First things first, can you introduce yourself to our readers? Where are you from, where are you based… and what first pulled you into the world of illustration?
Hi, I am Dominik. I am an illustrator from Nuremberg in Germany.
To narrow down what pulled me into the art world is very hard. That are many different steps on a fun and eventful journey. Like many artists I was drawing a lot as a child. History and specifically medieval stuff was super fascinating for me and I was always drawing knights and other fantasy related things.
After school I started studying history but switched to design after a while. There I focused on 3d animation and while making some animated short films I discovered the field of concept art. More and more I rediscovered my love for drawing and painting.
After university I worked some years as 3d and concept artist as well as graphic designer and art director. After some time I realised that I wanted to make illustrations. For the last 11 years I worked as a full-time freelance artist and my book Incendium is a collection of artworks which I created in the early 8 years of that.
How would you describe your visual universe? How did you “lock it in” creatively, and was there a specific moment when you thought: “That’s it, this is how I want to draw ”?
I usually describe my style as “Colourful Darkness”. I love dark fantasy themes with grim and sinister topics and I love to paint them in beautiful colours.
I never had the feeling that “this is my style now” or that I wanted to work towards a specific style. My style is the result of many years of having fun and exploring. It changed and was shaped over time and I deeply hope it will continue doing so. Otherwise it would be very boring.
So I hope I will never lock in on a specific thing for ever.
What’s the one piece of advice you’d give to someone dreaming of becoming an illustrator?
Always follow the fire inside you. That spark of inspiration. The joy of creating.
Skill, style and a career comes naturally with that. At least that’s how it worked for me.
From your perspective, what’s the reality of the job, and what are the toughest parts?
Most of the time it really is a lot of fun.
Painting and making artwork for amazing projects. And I am so grateful I have a job that gives me joy every day. But of course it is not happy painting every day all day long. There are also a lot of marketing things to do. How to present your self to possible clients. Creating a growing social media presence and think about content to share. Managing the business behind the art career is another thing to think about. Paperwork and contracts. I love being a business person. It is a lot of fun to think about what could be possible from a business point of view. Those are jobs on their own and you need to find a way to handle that while you do all the fun painting stuff. That is the toughest part.
AI is the hot topic these days, all over conversations and social media. I’ll be honest: personally, Geek-Art does not support it at all in the creative industry. But it is really interesting to get the artists’ point of view. How do you feel about it?
I am mostly annoyed and bored by it.
If you had to pick a single favorite piece from your portfolio, which would it be, and why?
That is impossible to say. Every piece has its history and its emotions connected to it. Things like the moments I painted it in, the music I listened while making it, the troubles and fun, the ups and downs, making every piece a deeply personal and emotional thing. Impossible to compare.
If you would make me pick one I would pick one of my most recent ones. The Nachtgiger. Probably since it is so recent. And it’s red. And I wrote a poem for it !
But if you ask me on another day I will probably name a different piece.
Finally, what keeps your creative spark alive? What inspires you the most?
I follow things that I love to do. I always try to focus on the joy I have during the process. If it is no fun for me to make an artwork it will be very hard for me to finish it.
Inspiration can be found everywhere. Literally everywhere. In every book, on every walk, every visit at the museum. It can be a taste, a smell, it can be a single color. It can hit at any time.
The most important thing to keep the creative spark alive is to open your perception for everything, especially the small and seemingly unimportant things. In those you can find the real and most unexpected treasures.
As a big fan of your work, I found your artbook Incendium absolutely fantastic. I guess I was not the only one because it recently received the prizefor Best Illustration Book at the “Les Imaginales” festival, in Epinal, France. Could you tell us a bit about the creative process of the book ?
Thank you so much! I am so honoured to have received this price!
The book is a collection of selected artworks, which I made over the course of around 8 years.From 2016 to 2024. We collected artwork from that time together with some of my poems andthoughts and put together a wild journey through all those different artworks.
Since they are all very different it was a bit tough to sort them, so we decided that we use the one common ground they are all build on. And that is color.
So the book is moving from one color to the next fading into each other and create a nice transition between different times and topics.After that we needed a name. As mentioned several times now, that spark of joy, that fire inside you that keeps you going, that makes you burn for something, is the most important thing for me.
Incendium is latin and means something like Firestorm and stands for that fire that I put into the creation of those artworks.
I hope it shines through for that it sparks joy and inspiration in others.
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