During August 2025, we welcomed our third Rubens Award holder, Kamille Corry, to complete her residency with us. Based in Utah, Kamille Corry’s art education took place primarily in Florence, Italy where she pursued etching studies at Il Bisonte and drawing and painting at Studio Cecil-Graves. Corry also trained extensively there with noted painter D. Jeffrey Mims.
During her two week residency, Kamille gave a flower painting workshop, and hosted a figure painting project for some of our team.
I am very honoured to have received this year’s Ruben’s Award from London Fine Art Studios. My time there coincided with a painting workshop in which I taught floral painting from life. It was two weeks of high energy painting and loads of inspiration.
Week 1 – Floral Painting (in oils) from Life, 18-22nd August.
Our floral painting workshop started Monday morning, and thanks to Jill Hooper, we had an abundance of gorgeous flowers waiting in the studio to paint from. We started the week off with painting a single flower to warm up, and apply some of the techniques I use in my painting. We focused on understanding the basic form of the flowers, what the character of that form was, and learning how to do a quick lay-in with paint, using shadow, mid-tone and lights. My goal for the students, especially during the beginning of the week, was to simplify the process, and still get the general effect of light, colour and form of each flower.
I showed the students my general process of making ‘base mixtures’ on my palette, that are meant to be adjusted as I am painting. We talked about basic colour theory, and how everyone sees colour differently – therefore I do not teach using specific formulas. I like to focus on using warms and cools, and keeping rich mid-tone more saturated – this helps to keep the richness of the colour effect once I add the lights on top, which are generally quite thick paint.
We continued to paint individual flowers through the middle of the week, but challenged ourselves each day with more complex flowers. I did demonstrations in the mornings and encouraged students to paint with me, instead of watching me the entire time. They were still able to watch my process during the morning, and we had discussions about my method throughout my painting time. In the afternoons, I did individual critiques with the students.
During the final days of the workshop we worked on painting a multi-flower composition, where students could focus on designing within their canvas parameters, colour and value scheme, as well as using the same varieties of flowers in various ways to add interest. We also talked about methods of propping up and supporting flowers while painting from life.
I was really amazed by how well each student captured the effects of the flowers, and how ambitious the compositions got by the end of the week. We lucked out with beautiful flowers, which lasted the entire week – supplied by Emmanuel, who has a workshop in the Battersea Business Centre as well.
Sketching at the V&A
On Friday evening, after the last day of the floral painting workshop, we went to the V&A museum to for an evening of sketching. A small group joined us, and I talked a bit about my time in London several years ago, when I came to independently study in the museums, primarily from sculpture. My goal for the evening was to sketch multiple angles from the same sculpture, in order to better understand the design of the human form, and the infinite compositional possibilities within the figure. Each of us set up at different sculptures to sketch. It was a lovely evening, and the crowds had cleared out quite a bit by the time we set up. Afterwards, we had a drink in the cafe and discussed our sketches. A perfect way to end a fantastic week with students!
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