Online Courses 2024/25
All course tuition is on a sliding scale, students are expected to make a contribution that is significant for them. Sliding Scale explanation and suggestions are available from Laura Summer: laurasummer@taconic.net
New Classes start in September 2024
All times are New York time
COLOR AS A WAY TO THE SPIRIT
Do you want to develop your capacity in the world of color perception, interaction and dynamic? Working with painting and drawing can be health giving and transformative. Working with color and composition in relation to meaning and expression can be life engendering for your soul. Whatever style of painting you are inclined toward, understanding color and composition will increase your capacity and enjoyment of your work.
When we begin to work with color we are often swayed by our likes and dislikes, but as painters we must move beyond this and learn the language of color. Although we see color with our eyes the experience of color is in the realm of quality and that realm is at first quite subtle. We must learn to quiet our sympathies and antipathies, cast off intellectual associations and listen to what the color is. Although you may at first wrinkle your brow in doubt at this, color is a non-material reality. To understand and to work with it as a partner we must learn to speak its language. Observe in yourself how one color feels, how is it different from another? Ask yourself the questions of the quality realm: Is it heavy or light? Is it warm or cold? Is it lively or still? Does it move toward me or away, and such.
This course will include written and video instruction as well as weekly group calls with participants from all over the world. Through this creative work a supportive transcultural community will be formed. Often in a group, working together, we can feel inspiration and understanding flow between us.
The course will be taught in blocks of 4 - 6 weeks. You can join at the beginning of any block. Blocks 2024/25 include:
Color and Contemplation September/October
Color Mood November/December
Color Dynamic January/ February
Color Devotion March/April
Layered Water Color and Surface Collage April/May
Tuition: Free Columbia is committed to making the cultural realm financially accessible to everyone. Each block is on a sliding scale of $0-200. A sliding scale tool is available. Contact Laura Summer to sign up.
Acknowledgements:
Many people have been my teachers over the years. Many of these exercises were developed out of the exercises of Jennifer Thomson, Ella Manor Lapointe, and Nathaniel Williams as well as, of course, Rudolf Steiner and Goethe.
Tuesdays once a month: working artistically with the Mantra of the School for Spiritual Science
As well as these, some previously given courses are available this year without zoom calls. If you want to take one of these courses you will be sent it in pdf form, some with video demonstrations. This can also work if the times offered for zoom calls don’t work for you.
All of these courses work with the subject by drawing and painting.
Below are courses without Zoom calls
Sliding scale for purchase is $0-120 per course
Rudolf Steiner’s Color Lectures
In this course we paint the exercises in the three color lectures given May 6-8, 1921.
Online: https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA291/English/RSPC1935/Colour_index.html
Audio: http://www.rudolfsteineraudio.com/colourCW291/colourcw291.html
Purchase: https://steinerbooks.presswarehouse.com/browse/book/9781855840850/Colour
Rudolf Steiner’s sketches for painters ( Nature Moods)
For each sketch I provide a number of exercises. Some are obviously directly related to the colors of the sketch, some are more investigations, some are concerned with movement or gesture. If you do all of them you should gain an overall understanding of what is happening in that sketch. For each sketch I have also suggested a word gathering exercise. This will help you enter into the realm of translating from color and form to word. Color could also be translated into music or movement and an exercise for that could be developed by a musician or movement specialist.
Rudolf Steiner’s Genesis lectures
Using Rudolf Steiner’s lectures on Genesis you will try to paint these images, exercises will be given but also free work is encouraged.
The Philosophy of Freedom by Rudolf Steiner
An exploration of this book by painting and drawing
The Gospel of John
based on my exercises in book form
The Calendar of the Soul
based on my exercises in book form
Plants and Landscapes
An observation through painting and drawing
Image Colors
An exploration of what Rudolf Steiner calls image colors - Black, White, Green and Incarnadine
Contact me at laurasuumer@taconic.net if you want to purchase a course.
Laura Summer