What Students Say

Community Painting

My name is Nick Vane. I am a retired Waldorf Class Teacher from Hereford and Kings Langley Steiner Schools in the UK. I came to the Rudolf Steiner Painting School after attending numerous short courses in Britain. I was looking for a way of re-connecting to the original painting indications of Rudolf Steiner rather than simply following the traditions established by practising artists therapists and teachers since his death. I found that the teaching provided by Caroline Chanter fulfilled this aspiration as everything is based upon a direct experience of what the colours themselves ask of us. This is true to Steiner’s practical phenomenological approach rather than following a “school of painting”. I have been able to bring all that I have learned directly into the class-room and yet each lesson stands alone as a living experience for each of the participants- both children and adults. Painting becomes a meditative path that inspires its own creativity and the courses are therefore suitable for teachers, therapists or anyone else looking for a practical new way to artistic self development.

Towards Plant Metamorphosis

Hi my name is Marie, I am a Canadian artist and I have been attending courses at the Rudolf Steiner Painting School for the past five years. I started taking short English workshops with Caroline Chanter; and in 2015 I had the opportunity to complete a full semester. My key motivation for returning is to learn more about how to apply Rudolf Steiner’s instructions on colour, and how he saw art.

The approach offered at the school is based on Gerard Wagner’s own research and studies of these instructions. This helps me as a painter to explore and experiment more with a view to developing my own feeling abilities with colours; and to see/feel for myself what is needed to respond to what is going on with the painting. With the school being only few steps from the Goetheanum, I was able to attend various concerts and eurythmy performances which complement this artistic discovery nicely. I look forward to my next opportunity to re-experience these venues.

Small Cupola Painting

My name is Katrina and I am from the Philippines. My year at the painting school has given me a profound experience of art, color, nature, the cosmos and of my own self, for which I am thankful. The painting approach itself is very human, a way of life. I can say that by working in this method I am truly engaged in creative activity and that it helps wake me up to my humanity. I now understand why it is therapeutic and why it has the potential in the healing of social life. Moreover, seemingly repeated exercises are not mere echoes, as I have learned. Just as each sunrise is always new to an observant eye, every yellow is always a new yellow. I feel that working with color in a way wherein one “empathizes” with it makes one’s senses keener. And it’s not just the eyes but also that sense which has the capacity to feel if a color is slightly warmer or cooler, if it wishes to form itself in a certain way or another, and which discerns if something is too much, too little or “just right”.

Avi

My name is Avi Doron and I have been practicing anthroposophical painting for the last ten years. In the last seven years I have been teaching painting in an Israeli high school. I teach special education classes, small groups and also work with individual high school students and teachers.

In the last five years I attended three courses of Caroline Chanter. The courses focused on sketches of Rudolf Steiner and his successor the painter Gerard Wagner. The latter studied Steiner’s sketches systematically and thoroughly.

During these courses and especially during the last course held in the summer of 2015, I went through a meaningful process. We practiced the use of our senses in order to grasp the essence of the colour, the colour’s will – whether softly with a light touch of the brush or strongly, to be present on the page.

Painting with colours made from plants, awakened an inner echo that touched me deeply and many questions have arisen. It is a long and tedious path, but I am sure of gaining a new dimension and that a new door has opened for me. It has significant effect on my paintings and teaching. I am eagerly waiting for the next course.

Ariela

My name is Ariela Doron, a senior biography counsellor living in Israel. In my private practice I work with individuals, couples and groups. I also teach and facilitate groups in an annual biography seminar.

I have studied anthroposophical painting, but felt that I was lacking something fundamental. I was lacking the understanding of the spiritual foundation as taught by Rudolf Steiner.  I could not find the path from subjective artistic expression to the objective essence of colours. Thus, I felt that my personal, professional and spiritual approach was lacking some essence.

I experienced for the first time these depths when Caroline Chanter presented the original sketches of Rudolf Steiner together with the thorough study of his successor the painter Gerard Wagner. I felt strongly that I found an answer to my quest, and painting became a deep meditative and transformative path. As such, this path triggered my creativity and I carry into my work as a counsellor the effect of this experience.

I also marveled for the first time at the colours based on plants. They have special quality and radiance that expand the emotional and spiritual experience of painting.  Since the last course I have continued painting with plant colours.

Caroline Chanter teaches from her deep knowledge and connection to anthroposophical painting. She is also very sensitive to her students and guides each one according to their needs yielding a significant inner work.