PSE22 - Observe Your Inner Experience of a Verse, Then Draw It

Today’s conversation comes from eastern NY state where I sit down with visual artist Laura Summer to talk about her work, her arts organization, Anthroposophy as world view, “painting” books, breaking her wrist, creativity as a force and a balancing quality, art as “service”.

freecolumbia.org ~ Laura’s books ~ laurasummer.com

Mentions this episode:

• Steiner on conscious cultivation of virtues as path of self-transformation

• Steiner on antipathies/sympathies

• Laura’s Gospel of St. John project

• Calendar of the Soul

• “Art is in my opinion the only revolutionary energy. In other words, the situation can only be changed through human creativity.” Joseph Beuys

• Anthroposophical painting approach

I would read a paragraph, I would re-state it and write it out in my own words, and then I’d read the next paragraph…and then either at the end of that chapter or maybe half-way through the chapter I would say, Okay, what’s the gesture here? And with a pencil I would draw the gesture that had been expressed in those paragraphs.

And then, after I went through the whole book that way, and I have this piece of paper that has all the gestures on it, then I read the book again, painting it each time, but using the gestures that I had come up with for each chapter.

Then I translated those paintings into figure, ‘cause I thought people maybe would have an easier time relating to figure.

[Laura’s Philosophy of Freedom painting project]

Steiner books mentioned this episode: Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, Occult Science, Theosophy, Philosophy of Freedom

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Practical Steiner is a podcast addressing the question “What might Steiner say?” about this or that topic that is of interest to me, the host. I am a fairly new Steiner student and have felt in these past three years that finally, after decades of wondering about the “why” of many things, I have finally come across someone with comprehensive knowledge enough to answer many of those questions.

My podcast is conversations - the more candid and honest the better - with various people who have been studying at least as long as I have and who have taken up Anthroposophy, in one measure or another, as a way of living. My over-arching interest is not in presenting “expert” opinion/interpretation of Steiner’s body of work but rather lies at the interface of the guidance from Steiner’s books and lectures with how someone lives their everyday life.

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