Lorna Leighton

Shalom Neighborhood Senior Center
"Introduction to Sketchbooking"
Pronouns: she/her
Artistic Discipline: Visual Arts
Category: SU-CASA
Grant Year: 2023
Location: Crown Heights

Lorna Leighton is a freelance painter, illustrator and graphic designer living in Brooklyn. She has an MFA in Illustration from SVA (1998) and a BS in Political Economics from UC Berkeley (1990). In the 1990’s, she worked as an AIDS educator and Case Worker in NYC. She returned to school for an MFA (1996-1998). She then worked graphic designer and illustrator for 15 years at Universal Motown/Republic and other companies. She took a Mural Course for Artists in Philadelphia (2015). After a layoff in 2018, she decided to freelance as graphic designer and focus instead on painting and drawing. During the first 2 years of the Covid-19 pandemic, her freelance work dried up and she began to draw and paint full-time.

Lorna was born in Chile and raised primarily in Brazil. She came to the US as a teenager with her family and has lived in NYC since 1990. At present, she works from her studio on paintings and sketchbooks. Two ink drawings were in recent shows put on by Arts Gowanus. She just finished teaching a Field Sketching class at the Bronx Botanical Gardens (NYBG). She is happy to call Fort Greene her home, a neighborhood whose diversity and beauty allow her to feel at peace and at home.