Anthroposophy
in my twenties I discovered the philosophy of Rudolf Steiner, it was a way of thinking that I recognized and that suited me. I have lived, practiced and experimented with it and that has shown me the world with new eyes. In anthroposophy, in fact, any profession becomes a form of art.
For me, anthroposophy is the practice of creative thinking, which is the only way to get to watch into the bowels or living reality. Seeing and creating becomes one – you thinking becomes more original, inventive and strange enough also more objective. I use these faculties alsp to bring awareness into my creative work – and help others with that. You turn you thinking into a mind’s eye that you use to observe – within yourself and into the ‘other’. Then you can examine deeper layers of consciousness – your feeling, your impulses of action.
All this works best in a direct conversation – in person or online. Speaking is a creative act. In a good conversation, you hear yourself say the most learnsome things, because every relationship is different. You can say these things only because you are espressing yourself to this specific person who listens.
Rudolf Steiner substantiated this theoretically, but also practiced it and applied it to all kinds of pieces of science. Whenever possible, he worked with professionals to develop new areas of work. This is how the biodynamic agriculture, free school education, healing pedagogy, eurythmy and Anthroposophical medicine arose.
Art
in the arts, like in education, farming etc, new practices were developed from Goethe’s and Steiner’s way of thinking. I found Liane Collot d Herbois very advanced, both in terms of content and technique, and I took a year of lessons in her techniques. It really developed my sense for the energetic qualities of color and also for movement, in painting. After that, I took that into my own form and style.
the work with which I graduated from the AKI, from photography to painting, actually belonged in the classical painting tradition. With it, I researched how to depict human perception itself. I discovered how an oil painting builds up like a photo print in the development tray. Also, how to make it represent the way we experience things in specific ways. when I paint, I work in two consciousness layers – one is the subject material (a portrait, landscape etc), the other is about how this image is putting itself together – which can happen in numerous different ways.
Where Collot painting is about colour immaterial-physical form (in watercolor or pastel chalk), classical painting is about building up the perception in the more material oil paint, from working with earth pigments, with black and especially white. The colors of watercolors and oils are the same, in terms of color effects it makes little difference – it is mainly the way you build the image that is different. Both ways are relevant to me and I try to combine those two techniques or traditions.