"I am a visual artist, I learn by painting and drawing. It is for me not a means of producing a product but a means of investigation and understanding. Over the 35 years that I have been painting I have investigated many things related to anthroposophy and spiritual practice. The Calendar of the Soul, The 12 Moods, the exercises from How to Know Higher Worlds, Occult Science and The Philosophy of Freedom all by Rudolf Steiner have occupied me as a painter, as well as themes such as “What is Collaboration?”, “the Development of Morality”, “Transformation through Turmoil” and “Creativity and Devotion”. I am currently involved with a long term collaborative work on life, initiation and death called the “Lazarus Project”.
To see the world through careful attention and then to follow this world inside to perceive the subtle movements, relationships and songs is the work of the spiritual researcher. To do this and then to bring these perceptions forth again through my instrument is the work of the painter".
Laura Summer is a painter working in many media based in mid state New York. She is co-founder of Free Columbia, an arts initiative that includes a program based on the fundamentals of painting as they come to life through spiritual science. It is completely grass roots donation supported and has no set tuitions. Her approach to color is influenced by Beppe Assenza, Rudolf Steiner, and by Goethe’s color theory. She has been working with questions of color and contemporary art for 35 years. Her work, to be found in private collections in the US and Europe, has been exhibited at the National Museum of Catholic Art and History in New York City and at the Sekem Community in Egypt. She has published twelve books, She founded two temporary alternative exhibition spaces in Hudson NY, 345 Collaborative Gallery and Raising Matter-this is not a gallery and initiated ART DISPERSAL where over 800 pieces of art by professional artists have been dispersed to the public without set prices.