This 5 week course will be inspired by our current art exhibition A Farewell to Art: Chagall, Shakespeare and Prospero and Marc Chagall's magical lithographic illustrations.
The exhibition will be an inspiration to studying a range of techniques and themes used by Chagall. This will include the basics of drawing and learning to use materials such as pencil, pen, charcoal and ink through to painting and how to apply some of these approaches to what inspires you.
This course is suitable for all abilities including beginners and more experienced artists who are seeking new creative directions.
About Lorna Carmen McNeill:
Lorna is a multi-disciplinary artist, qualified teacher and facilitator. Her artwork is immersive, sensory and experiential, inspiring people to achieve positive personal transformation and improve well-being. She has run innovative courses on art and to improve well-being in the NHS, further education, art colleges, universities, schools and the corporate world.
Lorna is interested in how different artforms can mutually strengthen and support each other to infuse creativity into the heart of life. Rather than questioning how creative a person is, she invites them to explore what they can do with the creativity that they intrinsically already are.
Lorna says: "I create art to connect with something greater than myself. I am fascinated by human potential for transformation and how it connects to the evolutionary cosmology and the journey of our Universe.
"My aim is to facilitate others to connect with inspiration and their individual passion through participating in my workshops. I hope that my work triggers a process that reveals that at this moment, each individual belongs and can make a unique and meaningful difference and contribution to the evolution of our universe."
About A Farewell to Art: Chagall, Shakespeare and Prospero – at The Arc, Winchester from 25 November 2022 to 12 February 2023:
A Farewell to Art: Chagall, Shakespeare and Prospero is a touring show from Ben Uri Gallery and Museum, London, showcasing a rare, limited-edition portfolio by Marc Chagall.
Produced at the age of 88, the exhibition features 50 illustrations created to reflect his interpretation of Shakespeare’s magical play, The Tempest. This edition of the play was published by Éditions André Sauret, under the supervision of Charles Sorlier in September 1975. The original lithographs by Marc Chagall were printed on the presses of Fernand Mourlot in Paris. The total run of the volume was 250 numbered copies. The copy on exhibition at The Arc, Winchester is number 122.
The exhibition draws on a number of themes, including the relationship between Shakespeare’s Renaissance aristocratic characters in The Tempest and Chagall’s own imaginary mythological world. The curatorial argument of this new exhibition is that Chagall saw Shakespeare’s The Tempest as symbolic of the tempest that engulfed his own life and the traumatic experiences of European Jews in the first half of the twentieth century.
Chagall knew the pain of being a refugee, having recognised his future lay outside Russia. He settled in Paris in 1907 and then, after being caught in his hometown of Vitebsk during the First World War, eventually managed to return in 1923. He was then forced into exile from his home in Paris in 1941 due to Nazi occupation and escaped to New York. It would be perfectly understandable if he compared himself to the exiled Prospero.
Towards the end of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, the lead character Prospero famously gives up his ‘rough magic’ and 'drowns his book'. Many have read Prospero’s abdication of magic as symbolic of Shakespeare’s own farewell to writing, as The Tempest is recognised as the last complete play he wrote. Chagall’s illustrations add many different dimensions and can be interpreted in many ways as his own ‘farewell’ to his frenetic artistic output on projects of this scale.
Image by Lorna Carmen McNeill
Dates and times
Course dates: Monday 9, 16, 23, 30, January and 6 February
We’re phasing out booking fees at The Arc but ask you to consider making a donation to our work instead.
Our ever-expanding programme of workshops, exhibitions and performances improves wellbeing, health and happiness – and it’s never been more important for local artists and audiences alike. We also work with and for Hampshire’s most vulnerable people and know the positive impact creativity can have on people of all ages.
Please help us to change lives through culture by adding a donation to your booking. Thank you.
