Foundations in Healing Through Art 2023-2024 Syllabus Outline
Light, Color, and Darkness
Month 1.
Boundaries, Edges and Transitions.
Exploring how things can meet, in this case light and darkness. Soul boundaries. Examples from nature, art and photography. Introduction to Light and Darkness as spiritually creative principles.
Handouts and readings. *
Month 2.
Charcoal Exercises – Letting light shine into darkness, creating space, and darkness rise towards the light, giving fullness and substance.
Handouts and readings.
Month 3.
Experiencing color out of the meeting of Light and Darkness.
Learning to see the world around us in a whole new way! We will do Goethe’s prism experiments, come to a new understanding of the rainbow and the color circle and create our own color circle. Observing color in the atmosphere and in nature. The connection with the human being.
Handouts and readings.
Month 4.
Color Space/Soul Space. Color Visualization from Liane Collot d’Herbois. Walk through Color Space. Evolution of consciousness through color. What is the significance of “darkness in front of the light” and “darkness behind the light”? Red and blue as opposite soul gestures.
Handouts and readings.
Month 5.
Qualities of colors out of an understanding of Light and Darkness. Warm colors.
Handouts and readings.
Month 6.
Qualities of colors out of an understanding of Light and Darkness. Cool colors.
Handouts and readings.
Month 7.
Working with color, developing our perception. Color mixing, split primaries, different aspects of color and color movement.
Month 8.
Fundamentals of Veil Painting.
Handouts and readings.
Month 9.
Veil Painting.
Handouts and readings for Light Color and Darkness work.
*Readings will mainly be from Light, Darkness and Colour in Painting Therapy by Liane Collot d’Herbois, Colour by Liane Collot d’Herbois, Color – Its Relationship to Soul and Spirit by Lois Schroff, Color and the Human Being by Chantal Bernard and Janny Mager, Art as Spiritual Activity edited by Michael Howard and references from Rudolf Steiner. In general, relevant excerpts will be provided. I have also created a number of handouts to help with further study of these principles.
Sculpture
Month 1.
Molecular/cellular/small piece sculpting on the plane.
Exploring contraction and expansion in many different directions and the association of these movements with the human body and inner life.
Handouts and readings.
Month 2.
Molecular/cellular/small piece sculpting 2.
Create an upright relief sculpture. Building a surface that breathes and moves easily into and occupies comfortably the different spatial directions.
Handouts and readings.
Month 3.
Coming into 3D.
Creating a series of hand sized forms where we can experience a center and periphery and the interaction of forces upon the sculptural surface.
Handouts and readings.
Month 4.
Standing forms.
Creating sculptural forms which stand on the ground and interact with the world through a center that is vertical and bridges above and below/heaven and earth.
Handouts and readings.
Month 5.
Two forms relating.
Working with two forms allows us to ‘activate’ the space between, to see and sculpt the shape of the space.
Handouts and readings.
Month 6.
Sequence of forms 1.
Sculpting a number of forms that follow each other in time as if they were growing and developing in a lawful
process. The space between forms is experienced having a time value.
Handouts and readings.
Month 7.
Sequence of forms 2.
Introduction to the 7-fold metamorphic process. Sculpting 7 forms in sequence connected to the archetypal qualities associated with the 7 planets and the life processes.
Handouts and readings.
Month 8.
Moebius Form.
Sculpting the moebius to develop sensitivity to flowing, consistent and transforming surfaces.
Handouts and readings.
Month 9.
Human and Animal figures.
Sculpting simple archetypal human and animal forms to bring everything we have learned into more representational sculptures.
Handouts and readings.
Handouts and readings for sculpture work.
Readings will be from a number of lectures by Rudolf Steiner, from the book Art as Spiritual Activity by Michael Howard, and from various Waldorf educational and art books and articles.
Form Drawing
We are in association with Danish Anthroposophical artistic therapist Grith Gough, and each month we will share links to 2 form drawing lessons. These lessons have been carefully crafted in a sequence that aligns with our course process.
Sketching
Ken will provide numerous sketching techniques that support the sculptural work.
