Solution-Focused Painting Therapy LOM®

LOM® Solution-Focused Painting Therapy

LOM® Solution-Focused Painting Therapy is an art therapy approach that works directly with the concerns of those who paint. These concerns include unwanted symptoms and memories, inappropriate behavior, trauma, fears, relationship conflicts, disturbing cognitions, dreams, wishes, challenges, and whatever else is brought into the process. LOM® primarily affects the brain and leads to lasting improvements in quality of life. The painting therapy work is based on standardized assessments, and the success of the work is evaluated on a scale from 0 to 10 at the beginning and at the end of the process. LOM® is supported by studies.

The painting therapist proposes a very specific procedure for the issue at hand, and the participants are guided by the therapist at all times while painting. The procedure is based on three fundamental interventions and is implemented in practice in this seminar. To make it easier to get started, several cases are presented at the beginning of the seminar. The continuing education program is conducted online.

The insights into the LOM® method are intended to encourage participants to consider new approaches to art therapy.

LOM® – Supervision

To complete the continuing education program “LOM® – Solution-Focused Painting Therapy” with a LOM® and Alanus certificate, 24 hours of supervision are required. Our LOM® instructors offer LOM®-related supervision at an hourly rate of €80. The supervision hours can be booked either individually or in a group.

A group size of 4 people for 2 hours is recommended, which comes to €40 per person. If you have already completed LOM®-related supervision hours, these may be credited where applicable.

Artistic therapists with a successfully completed university degree, a comparable qualification, or suitable professional experience. Interested individuals from related professional fields may also participate in individual modules.

Advanced course for former LOM® participants – ONLINE Self-portrait: Completing relationship work / Making decisions

Dates: 12/19/26.02.2026

Following relationship-oriented image work as applied in the LOM® process, it is of central importance that the person painting also perceives and depicts themselves with the same degree of differentiation as the relationship portrait created beforehand. For this purpose, work is done with the self-portrait. During the artistic exploration, particular focus is placed on the differentiated observation and reflection of current emotions, bodily sensations, as well as dysfunctional cognitions and thought patterns that arise in the moment of the creative process.

Especially when working through decision-making conflicts, which often lead to inner strain and a sense of stagnation, the LOM® setting offers a structured opportunity to reflect on and support one’s own decision-making in a solution-focused way. The self-portrait serves as a central visual resource for making inner processes visible and therapeutically usable.

12 teaching units

Date 12.03.2026 – ONLINE

Introduction to Solution-Focused Painting Therapy – LOM®

Solution-Focused Painting Therapy, or LOM® for short, places great importance on painting images of stressful situations exactly as the person actually saw them. If the focus is on inner processes such as feelings, sensations, thoughts, or symptoms for which no clear visual ideas exist, these are instead depicted in the form of metaphors—independent images that include familiar objects and shapes but have no direct connection to the original concern. This approach makes it possible to work through a symptom or trauma while the memory of the event remains, but the distressing feelings that usually accompany it no longer occur.
This course offers a comprehensive insight into the methods of Solution-Focused Painting Therapy and presents all areas of application. It is a crucial tool for dealing effectively with strong emotions that may arise during a painting therapy session. Participation in this course is a prerequisite for the LOM continuing education program.

4 teaching units

Anyone can participate. Prerequisite for participation in the full-package booking; the amount will be credited.

Module I // ONLINE – Working with Metaphors

Dates 09.04., 16.04., 18.04., 23.04.2026

Dr. Bettina Egger and M.Sc. Jörg Merz developed solution-focused painting LOM® thanks to their great curiosity and enormous interest in research. LOM® is an art therapy method aimed at replacing disturbing memory images in the brain with images free of disturbance. The images are selected in relation to specific concerns before painting and are then painted as they were seen or in their simplest form. The goal is to create a new, neutral impression.
Many distressing issues, strong feelings, symptoms, and sensory perceptions are not directly linked to images. Therefore, an image must be found that is independent of the problem itself. For this process, Bettina Egger and Jörg Merz developed a specific technique that works with metaphors.
Metaphors are independent images that resonate with an event, but they have no comprehensible connection to the concern and are always embedded in a meaningful background. To find a motif for the metaphor, the patient is asked a question from a specific category, e.g. If your fear of flying were a vessel, what kind of vessel would it be?

In this course, we learn how to use this method to work on many different types of problems and how to reduce the felt subjective burden caused by feelings and sensations.

21 teaching units

Module II // ONLINE – Distressing Images

Dates 04.06., 20.06., 25.06.2026

As neurobiologist Gerald Hüther says, the brain is an imaging organ. These stored inner images, whether from dreams or situations actually experienced, can still burden us years later. Most of the time, we are not even aware of the impact these images have on our daily lives, and yet they are there and disruptive. Those affected would be glad not to have to see them anymore. With LOM®, we work specifically on these disturbing inner images and replace them with new images that help and resolve underlying problems.

In this course, we learn how to deal with these distressing images and how they can be transformed into “non-distressing” images. The images are painted exactly as the affected person saw them, entirely from their perspective. How this work with distressing images is supported through art therapy and how—what we call in LOM®—“putting the images in order” can be carried out in concrete terms will be the focus of this module.

17 teaching units

Module III // ONLINE – Relationships

Dates 03.09., 12.09., 17.09.2026

Relationships have a fundamental and vital importance. At the same time, problems within a relationship, losses, or dysfunctional patterns can represent a considerable burden.

In LOM® Solution-Focused Painting, a strained relationship is worked through artistically and therapeutically by creating a portrait of the person concerned. This portrait is created, as is customary in the method, gently, slowly, and with loving attention. Through this mindful process, a new inner connection to the depicted person gradually develops.

In addition, working on the image level offers the opportunity to process distressing patterns and old wounds, thereby opening up new perspectives in dealing with relationship experiences.

17 teaching units

Module IV – Working with trauma – Intensive week in Barcelona

 14-18.10.2026

As neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux explains, when a trauma is remembered or recounted, the memory becomes unstable. During this period of neurological instability, a calming image can be placed in the position of the fear-triggering image. The new image is consolidated through painting. The memory of the trauma is then still there, but it no longer triggers stress or disturbing feelings.

In this course, participants are guided in painting and accompanying these traumatic images from the perspective of the affected person. The sequence of the trauma is put into the correct order and made available to consciousness. The final image, which shows that the trauma is over, is the one the brain will remember in connection with the traumatic events. In this way, the trauma is defused. Remembered images, bodily reactions, and intense feelings dissolve, and the trauma no longer has a distressing effect.

Scope: 38 teaching units

Module V – ONLINE – Working with Systems

Dates 07.01., 16.01., 21.01.2027

Our families of origin and their families of origin often have more influence on our thinking, feeling, actions, and experience than we would like. There are issues that are passed down from generation to generation and repeat themselves as if by fate, and there are issues, such as the position someone occupies within a family, that are repeatedly cemented by the family system in changing group-dynamic constellations. We can paint an image of the atmosphere of our origin and one of the atmosphere of the system that we ourselves have helped shape. We can also return things that do not belong to us to the system: responsibilities we have taken on, attributions that do not fit us, etc. And we can strengthen our own system with what we ourselves want and what is good for us.

In Module V, we learn how to draw and create a genogram (our family tree) and use various criteria to trace attributed influences that affect our present lives. Influences we wish to change are worked on using LOM®.

Scope: 17 teaching units

Cora Egger
Ceramic artist, art therapist for Person-Oriented Painting and Solution-Focused Painting Therapy (LOM®). Works in her own practice in Barcelona with children and adults, LOM® lecturer.

Stephanie Loop
Qualified art therapist (ED), specializing in design and painting therapy, psychiatric nurse HF; supervisor and teaching therapist (OdA Artecura) for art therapists. LOM® in psychiatry (inpatient, outpatient, and forensic) and in private practice.

Jörg Merz 
Master of Science University of Zurich, clinical psychologist, specialist psychologist in psychotherapy FSP, supervisor ODA Artecura. Psychotherapy and art therapy. Co-developer of LOM®

Monica Portmann
Qualified art therapist (ED), specializing in design and painting therapy, coaching for individuals and teams, human resource manager. Art therapy, LOM®️ with adolescents and adults. Inpatient art therapy support in clinical settings (burnout, depression, psychosomatics)

Simone Riner
Qualified art therapist (ED), specializing in design and painting therapy; lic.phil. communication sciences. Art therapy, LOM® with children, adolescents, and adults, specialist field: palliative care; people on the autism spectrum (ASD); editorial board member of f.orum professional journal for art therapies.

Ursula Riner
Qualified educator, federally certified art therapist (ED), specializing in design and painting therapy,  certificate in psychotherapy sciences, adult education. Works with children, adolescents, and adults, primarily LOM®, supervision and teaching therapy, LOM® lecturer (CH and DE)

Head of the Institute for Continuing Education in Artistic Therapies:
Brigitta Jaroschek M.A. (research associate)

Attendance of basic modules I-V
Supervision*, case documentation
*For information, see Goals and Content

see module descriptions

– Institute for Continuing Education in Artistic Therapies
Tel. +49 (0)2222 9321-1987
weiterbildung.kunsttherapie@alanus.edu

The terms and conditions of participation can be downloaded here as a PDF