The course for Self-Expression through Colour

“The Creativity of the Soul”

Edoardo Salvestrini

Purpose of this course is to free creativity through colour.
Each colour represents an energy,
each colour has its own psychic power to the observer, affects her/his inner life, activating the creative force.

In the very first stage of the course we learn to act in an instinctive way with colour, to let the colours and the internal shapes emerge with immediacy and spontaneity. With simple means, like crayons and a white sheet of paper, we learn to leave our hand free to draw signs, shapes and colours, without any interference from opinions or appreciations, in complete freedom.

Before each practice session, we activate relaxation through breathing:
with inner peace we follow the attraction to the one colour that asks us to be used in that moment.

The work program is mainly practical. With a simple, immediate mean, such as crayons, we enter the world of colour: in fact, according to the pressure we exert onto paper, we can create countless transparencies and gradients, strength and intensity; rubbing a woolen cloth against the crayon its wax heats, allowing countless variations and layers; thence with emotion emerges that naivety and freshness of the child that discovers the beauty of the world with wonder. The psychic force of colours has the great power of activating creativity and balancing emotions.

In order to deeply understand the meaning of shapes and colours, their power and psychic value, we will learn to interpret according to the objective symbolism. Every object of Nature, including the products of human intelligence, has symbolic meaning, when seen in the context of artistic projection.
To look at the shapes and colours that are projected on the sheet as a magnetic field that emanates psychic energy. To escape from the usual patterns of aesthetic evaluation, to fully enjoy the symbolic, deep meaning that is told us by the colours expressed in our drawings.

Many people think to be unable to draw or paint:
the composition of the colours and shapes, which are created in freedom as we learn in this course, can lead us towards the experience of the expressive power of pure colour, to free ourselves from the block of “not being able to do”.

The course consists of three stages

  1. Automatic phase.
  2. Giving artistic form to thoughts, images, projects that look from within.
  3. Consequent phase of the dialogue with the outside world. Through the representation of concepts comes the social dimension of artistic expression.

The course has been given

  • Since 1991, privately to groups of adults and children.
  • In 1991 at the State Middle School of Cernusco sul Naviglio (Milan), to a group of support teachers.
  • In 2004, at the European Institute of Design (Milan), as masterclass within the curricular course about the colour.
  • Since October 2006, at the cultural association “La Terza Onda” Milan.
  • In July and September 2008, at San Gregorio convent - holiday home -, Condino, Trento.
  • 2009, San Gregorio convent, Condino.
  • 2009, intensive courses at Fondazione Humaniter - Società Umanitaria, Milan.