Art Classes at the Toronto Seminary
by Robert Bower
I almost don’t recognize who I was when I look back at myself just 18 months ago, when I first set foot in the Seminary of The Christian Community in North America. I’ve gone through multiple transformative processes in such a short time. One area in particular in which I have grown is in my experience of creating visual art.
When the seminary relocated to Toronto in the summer of 2019, it was blessed to be able to hire Regine Kurek as its art instructor. Regine has used her 40 years of experience facilitating adult art classes to lead us through areas ranging from working with water colors to Goethe’s Color Theory. I have been struck with how sensitively she directs us all through the process of creating Art. She doesn’t just assign us tasks, she guides us through exercises that build upon one another. Before we know it, we’ve become creators.
The following pictures come from our exploration into The After Image, Complimentary Colors, and the 7 Life Processes (which are sequential as follows): 1) Breathing, 2) Pulsing, 3) Relating, 4) Identifying, 5) Refining, 6) Enlivening, 7) Balancing / Beautifying / Harmonizing.
As we moved from enlivening the senses to ensouling the life processes, our artwork moved towards the refinement of subtle figures, which our classmates noticed within our paintings.
I hope you enjoy the following images as much as we enjoyed creating them…
an after image exercise collaboration by Marc Fortin and Robert Bower
Erica Maclennan’s after image / complimentary color exercise
by Erica Maclennan
by Robert Bower
About the author:
Robert is currently in the “Walking with Christ” program at the Toronto Seminary. He is from the Chicago area by way of Ghent, New York. He has been a biodynamic vegetable grower for over 25 years.
This is a blog entry by a student at The Seminary of the Christian Community in North America. These are posted weekly by the student editorial team of Robert Bower, Shannon Young and Faith DiVecchio. For more information about our seminary, see the rest of our website, and for even more weekly podcast and video content check out the seminary patreon page.
The views expressed in this blog entry do not necessarily represent the views of the Seminary, its directors or the Christian Community. They are the sole responsibility of its author.
