Louise Worner

Louise is a British/Australian ikebana artist who currently lives in Waterloo, Belgium. Her 25-year ikebana journey has spanned across Belgium, Japan, Australia, and Spain.

Louise commenced studying Sogetsu ikebana in 1998, while living in Japan. She studied under the guidance of Yoka Hosono-sensei, a Master Instructor at Sogetsu Headquarters. She was awarded her Sogetsu Ikebana Teacher’s Certificate in 2000, by the former Iemoto of the Sogetsu School, Hiroshi Teshigahara.

In her endeavour to forge global ikebana ties, Louise has presented workshops in New York City, Philadelphia, Delaware, Canberra (Australia), Madrid, Paris, Belgium, Geneva, and the Netherlands. She has work on permanent display in the Netherland’s Flower Art Museum’s Wall of Flowers, and in 2022 assisted members of the Sogetsu Netherlands Branch at Floriade, a once a decade flower and garden Expo in Almere.

Louise has worked alongside internationally renowned ikebana artists including Ilse Beunen (Belgium), Yoshiro (Seiseki) Umemura (Australia) and was a member of the team assisting Sogetsu Ikebana Master Instructor Tetsunori Kawana (Japan) prepare and present an ikebana demonstration at the Embassy of Japan in Canberra, Australia.

She has collaborated with many non-ikebana artists, including musicians, ceramicists, designers, studio potters, artists, and poets from the U.S.A., Japan, and Spain. She has participated in live and virtual exhibitions for ikebana groups in Australia, Belgium, Ecuador, Finland, France, India, Japan, the Netherlands, the Philippines, Russia, Singapore, and Spain. Large installation collaborations include the Christmas installation for Hotel Tótem, Madrid, Spain, and the stage design for Japanese singer/composer Youmi Kimura’s ('Always With Me' from the Studio Ghibli film Spirited Away) performance in Canberra, Australia. Her corporate work has included the creation of arrangements for Casa Décor in Madrid, ACdO Design Studio (Madrid), and a perfume launch for Issey Miyake.

Louise is the founding Chairperson of the Sogetsu Study Group Madrid. In 2022 and 2023 she was selected as a Committee Member for the International Ikebana Gallery Award. She currently lives in Belgium, however, regularly commutes between Brussels and Madrid to teach ikebana, not only to her own students, but also for the Madrid Flower School’s Professional Floristry Program, as their Principal Ikebana Teacher.

Louise is also passionate about teaching ikebana to children. In 2018, both of her daughters, aged 6 and 8 years, won the Sogetsu Ikebana Ikeru-chan Prize. In the following year, her eldest daughter won the prize for a second time. In 2021, her youngest daughter was a finalist in the Ikebana Gallery Award. In the same year, Louise was awarded a bursary by the Ikebana Iwaya Fund to create a video on teaching ikebana to children. In 2023 she published her first ikebana book “My First Ikebana: Ikebana for the Young and Young at Heart” (Stichting Kunstboek ISBN 9789058567161).

Her arrangements have been published in Stichting Kunstboek (2023) ‘Ikebana Opposites Attract’, Prisha Publications (2022) ‘Ikebanists Around the World’, Stichting Kunstboek (2020) 'Masterclass Ikebana', Terra Firma Magazine’s 2019 Diary, and ‘Vase and Flower’ by Akiko Tsuji (2018). In 2021, she was featured in the Autumn edition of the Japanese magazine “Sogetsu” (published by Sogetsu Ikebana Headquarters).