Sourcing Creativity – and Collaborating with what Emerges
Its been a while since I’ve written a newsletter, although I have been thinking about it for some time. My creative life has been full lately – making, teaching, experimenting with new ideas and developing workshops – and I’ve realised that I’d like to tell you more about that.
So I’m restarting this part of my website as Sourcing Creativity – a place where I’ll share what I’m making and exploring, artists and ideas that inspire me, discoveries from my workshops, and sometimes a creative exercise or something I’ve found interesting.
So what do I mean by “Sourcing Creativity – and Collaborating with what Emerges”?
I work to enable the conditions for creativity to flow. Sometimes it means going out of your comfort zone to allow in the unexpected. Sometimes I have a subject in mind but I don’t always know where it will take me. Once something starts to emerge, I can begin to collaborate and dialogue with it, shape and direct it towards the project I want to make.
And that’s exactly what I’m exploring in my new four-week course.
Creative Alchemy
Painting · Colour Pouring · Texture and Creative Collage
Letting the Materials Lead
We’ll experiment with colour pouring, creating new textures beneath the paint with gesso, layering and transforming the surfaces we make. We’ll then respond to what emerges – cutting, rearranging, drawing and painting into these unexpected forms.
One of the things I’m particularly looking forward to is using free-fall images created through the pouring process as a starting point for cutting and constructing a self-portrait, or another image of your choice.
There isn’t a single finished image we are aiming for. Instead, we’ll look, respond and discover where our curiosity and passion lead us.
Sometimes accidents lead you into a new direction, with new colours, new marks – it’s as if a new life comes into being which sometimes takes my breath away as it is so exciting and unexpected. I welcome these “mistakes” as I see them as opportunities for new directions and to ask:
Where is this leading me? How can I collaborate and dialogue with this?
That’s the starting point for Creative Alchemy – a four-week exploration of painting, colour pouring, watercolour, collage and mixed media.
Join me in November:
6 · 13 · 20 · 27 November 2026
Fridays · 1.30–4.30pm
Quaker Meeting House, Winchester
£180 for all four sessions with basic materials included – places are limited to small groups for personal attention.
Suitable for complete beginners as well as experienced artists.
From head to heart to hand
Coming from a very academic family, I decided early on that I wanted a path with heart rather than purely head, and I’ve made my own long journey from head to heart to hand. It has become central to how I teach.
We can spend so much time wondering whether something is good enough, whether we’re doing it “right”, or whether we’re “creative enough”.
I’ve developed a series of processes that help people move out of their heads and into the experience of making, so that thinking supports the process rather than restricting it..
One participant described one of my courses:
“This course has been phenomenal, illuminating and inspiring both from an art technique and personal development perspective, I don’t know how she achieved it, but Lorna has created something very special.” Charlotte S.
These are the moments that mean the most to me – when someone discovers something they didn’t know was possible and it not only frees up their art, but something in their whole life as well.
I’m fascinated by artists who have challenged conventional ways of seeing and making including Picasso, Hannah Hoch, Man Ray, Helen Frankenthaler among many others.
I don’t want participants to imitate these artists. I’m interested in what they can open up for us – different ways of seeing, experimenting and thinking about what an artwork can be. We can borrow elements of the gems that they bring to the world and make them into something that is our own.
I’ll share more about the above artists and ideas behind this way of working, including Cecil Collins, Dana Lynne Andersen and Rod Judkins, the influence of Visual Medicine, and how painting can be a healing process.
I’m looking forward to sharing my creative world with you.