Description
Making the Invisible Visible
Exploring Colour, Form and Personal Expression (Five Week Course)
Art offers a unique way of making the invisible visible. Through colour, form, texture and abstraction we can move beyond surface appearance to reveal the essence, energy, atmosphere and emotional reality of our experience.
Drawing inspiration from artists including Picasso, Pollock, Kandinsky, Kapoor and Rothko, this course explores how abstraction—alongside more figurative approaches—can become a powerful language for personal expression. From expressive semi-figurative work to fully non-figurative painting, you’ll discover the approach that most authentically expresses your own way of seeing.
Rather than following a set style, you’ll be supported to develop your own personal theme or creative enquiry. Whether your work becomes expressive, more or less figurative or highly abstract, the emphasis is on discovering an authentic visual language that is uniquely your own.
Although everyone works through the same creative processes initially together, each participant is then supported to follow their own individual creative enquiry. As a result each person’s work emerges as unique.
What you’ll Explore
- Colour, form, texture, rhythm, movement and mark-making as expressive visual languages.
- A wide range of materials, techniques and creative processes, including both 2D and 3D explorations with wire and clay.
- The working methods of influential abstract artists and how their ideas can inform your own creative practice.
- Different ways of expressing atmosphere, emotion, memory and the essence through abstraction.
- Increasing confidence in experimentation, intuition and creative decision-making.
- Developing your own visual language through a personally meaningful creative enquiry.
How we’ll work
Across five inspiring workshops you will:
- Experience guided demonstrations and practical experimentation.
- Explore a wide range of materials, techniques and creative processes to encourage freedom, curiosity and unexpected creative discovery.
- Apply each new process to your own personal creative enquiry.
- Receive individual guidance throughout the course.
- Develop a body of experimental work alongside more resolved pieces.
Suitable for beginners and experienced artists alike.
Materials
Provided
- Basic paper
- Drawing materials
- Wire and clay
Please bring
- Student-quality acrylic paints or Watercolours/gouache.
- A selection of round and flat brushes.
A detailed materials list will be sent after booking.
What participants say
“I just wanted to say how supportive and freeing I found your workshop. You are a great teacher and the workshops are all art teaching should be. I would highly recommend your workshops to anyone—beginner or established artist. You’ve inspired me to apply for a formal Art qualification—something I never thought I would do.” Elaine W.
“Exceptional teacher. Lorna created a space that creatively freed me. A deeply enriching experience.”
About Lorna Carmen McNeill
Lorna Carmen McNeill is a mixed media and light artist, teacher and creative process facilitator. She studied Fine Art at Camberwell School of Art, Goldsmiths and The Art Academy, and has taught across higher and further education, the NHS, charitable organisations, community settings and corporate environments.
Her work is rooted in the understanding that creativity is far more than artistic skill—it is a way of being and perceiving, responding to and engaging with the world. Through carefully designed creative processes, Lorna creates supportive and inspiring environments where participants develop artistic confidence, technical skills and a deeper connection with their own innate creativity. As their confidence grows, they discover their own unique way of seeing, responding and making, enabling an authentic visual language to emerge naturally.
