Taruna College New Zealand is a centre for Adult Education offering an exciting range of formal and informal holistic courses and subjects inspired by the work of Rudolf Steiner PhD. such as: Waldorf Teacher Education, Biodynamic Organic Agriculture, Anthroposophical Nursing, Art of Health and Coaching and Biography Workshops.

    Art as a Basis for Education

Van James, an experienced, international art educator based at the Honolulu Waldorf School in Hawaii, author of Spirit and Art: Pictures of the Transformation of Consciousness, will lead two weeks of exploring and experiencing painting and drawing as it can be taught in Rudolf Steiner Schools and other educational settings. This course will highlight the importance of art in the overall education of the child and the teacher. This is a course for non-artists as well as those who have had some experience. No prior skills are needed.

As a teacher or parent you will be provided with the opportunity to discover the artist within; to develop new skills, confidence and consciousness in a supported and sensitively guided environment.         

Painting; wet-on-wet & wet-on-dry paper
Drawing; Black & White, Crayon, Coloured Pencil
Landscape
Still Life
Perspective 
Figure drawing
Portraiture 
Blackboard drawing
Pastels
Form drawing

Painting is primarily concerned with practising colour scales which give expression to the broad spectrum of our feelings and emotions.  Confidence in colour experience can reflect the development of emotional intelligence and the use of cognitive feeling, a perceiving of the interior-exterior nature of reality.

Drawing brings the language of form and the language of colour together with our imagination and observation. The introduction of developmentally appropriate themes and techniques in drawing can aid in the building of important capacities in the child and young person. The student's individuality unfolds between expressing the inner life of imagination and articulating the outer world by means of drawing.  Drawing can be a learning about oneself and the world.

Form Drawing, the rendering of linear designs and patterns, is a language of directed movement come to rest.  It makes perfect sense that this line art is taught to children as part of a primary school education because of its practice of hand-eye coordination and exercising of fine motor skills. 

These programmes will be complemented with daily workshops in other arts.