INSTALLATION sculptures that explore light, colour and rhnythm has won a major award for a local artist.

Lorna Carmen McNeill, of Riverside Road, St Albans, received the Art Academy Award 2013 for ‘the student who had progressed the most’ and graduated with a first class diploma at the London-based art school.

She worked for 18 years as a clinical nutritionist using art in mental health settings to help people overcome unhelpful patterns of eating.

Her artwork is a fusion of the disciplines of painting, sculpture and installation and invites the viewer to feel immersed and comforted while walking through myriad changes of light and colour.

She said: “At my graduation show many people commented on how the work had an uplifting effect. I am hoping to create work to inspire people in public and private places and also to support and comfort people who feel vulnerable in such places as hospices, hospitals and mental health settings.”

Lorna uses different types of acrylics and polycarbonates, much of which she sourced from companies in Herts that were throwing them away as waste. She explained: “I am interested in plastics because of their transparency and once heated above a certain temperature they surrender their form, become completely fluid and flexible and can be shaped freely into many forms.”

She was recently commissioned for a Community Support and Outreach Sculpture sculpture for Trinity United Reformed Church in St Albans and One Sky, a perspex light installation for an exhibition at KPMG in London.

To see more of the artist’s work go to the website www.lornacarmenmcneill.com