marie-laure valandro: homage to liane
Ms. Valandro graced The Art Hall and everyone who entered with her magnificent and healing paintings, inspired by her beloved teacher, Liane Collot D’Herbois. The titles allude to the inspiration each calls forth: Threshold, Sophia Imagination, Simon/Buddha/Child/Mary, Archangel of Healing, and Moses are just a few of the fourteen sacred works. Taking months to create, these veil paintings reveal the dynamic relationship between light and darkness, out of which is born color. It is clear that Marie-Laure is an artist of great intensity and devotion, carrying forward the important work of her teacher in exploring the healing qualities of color.
Ms. Valandro kept us engaged in Cedarwood’s Waldorf School’s adjacent and newly lazured performance space for over an hour during her presentation on The Arts, which was really more a collaborative experience than a lecture. She quickly won over her audience of several dozen with her vitality, depth of knowledge, and love for humanity and its future, focusing on the critical role of the arts in our collective evolution. Twice during her presentation Marie-Laure invited us all to go back into The Art Hall to participate in an exercise: first to observe the light in a painting and second to note where one’s eyes would naturally fall and focus. In each case we shared our impressions–in the form of a feeling word–and together began to develop an emotional understanding of the power we had experienced. The presentation was both lively and informative and was met with enthusiasm and grand applause.
Friday morning The Art Hall hosted a three-hour workshop on Light and Darkness in charcoal with Marie-Laure. Such a study is a precursor to working with color as first prescribed by Liane and then later taught by Marie-Laure at her school in Wisconsin. Though brief, the workshop gave the thirteen participants more than just a taste of how one begins to understand–and feel–the dynamic tension between light and darkness.
We again want to thank Marie-Laure for her thoughtfulness and the tremendous amount of labor she put into wrapping each painting, piling them all in her truck, making the long drive down from Bellingham, and then hanging the show all in one day. All the paintings are for sale: Marie-Laure donates her proceeds to charity and, as usual, a portion will also go to The Art Hall to support our mission of community enrichment through exhibits and presentations by artists working out of Anthroposophy. If you are interested in a private viewing please contact Robin Lieberman at 503-222-1192 or robin@robinlieberman.net.
The Art Hall at Cedarwood Waldorf School 
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