Below are photos of Waldorf and Anthroposophical artwork, workbooks, etc. referenced by discussion forum posts.
2001-01-14: Talismans posted by Sharon Lombard
Wet-on-wet Painting As Talisman
Collected waldorf-critics posts by Sharon Lombard
Sharon Lombard is a long time member of PLANS and our resident Waldorf scholar-in-the-making. In January 2001, she shared via successive posts to the waldorf-critics discussion group her research on the meaning behind Waldorf’s signature “wet-on-wet” painting technique used in the lower grades.
—— Start of Forwarded Message ——
From: soma
Sent: Thu, 11 Jan 2001 15:27:02 -0800
To: waldorf-critics@topica.com
Subject: Talismans
Hi every one, it’s Sharon here with 5 batches of talismans for you to look at. Missing from the pile are numbers 14-22 due to technical difficulty. The pictures that I’ve sent are not the best quality, but they are a start, and will help to illustrate a little of what I have found out about the Waldorf wet-on-wets.
I will share with the list an assortment of the clues that I’ve come across in my reading. I will slowly post information under the heading “Talismans”. Take a look at the attachments, all of them are occult moral exercises that my daughter produced / experienced, *except* the batch that depicts the lightning bolts and pyramids. Those talismans were made by an older child, but I’ve included them because I think they are interesting. This is just a beginning, obviously there are many grades and many school weeks.
The images by my daughter were made during Kindergarten through to the first part of 4th grade when she left the school. Missing from her stack are a small pile, approximately 8 or so talismans that I regrettably threw away in disgust right after we left the school. Had I understood what the color blobs were, and had I known that I would find PLANS and become fascinated with the pictures and want to study them, I would have “treasured” every single one.
Also missing from my daughter’s pile are the talismans from a 3 month period at the end of 3rd grade when she did not attend Waldorf. (We took her out of the increasingly religious curriculum thinking that the following year, 4th grade, would level off, which it did not). Instead she attended a little school in Jamaica where we have family. We all loved her Jamaican school but watched her struggle to catch up to the other children, by the end of the three months, she was thriving academically and very happy.) We put her back into Waldorf for 4th grade and ended up leaving for good after a couple of months. I still had not read Steiner or found the PLANS site at this point in time.
The talismans are not in a special order. I will repost certain attachments with specific information during the next couple of weeks. Hope you can open them without difficulty.
I’ll let you digest them.
Sincerely, Sharon
2001-09-21: Photos from book “Art Inspired by Rudolf Steiner: An Illustrated Introduction” by John Fletcher
2001-11-27: Chart of Cosmic Evolution from the end notes of Rudolf Steiner’s “The Temple Legend”
