Ars Gloria: Camille Engel on Euphoria at the Easel
Editor’s Note: This artist profile is part of a statewide series highlighting Tennessee artists participating in Ars Gloria, a visual arts initiative presented by the Tennessee Press Association and the Tennessee Art League. Follow Ars Gloria on Facebook and Instagram for additional artist features, competition news, and updates throughout the year.
Taking on the role of an observer with each new project, artists uncover details others can’t see. Through an understanding of visual language and the close study of a subject, they learn what makes a person, place, or thing singular. Using their creativity, artists can make the granular visible.
An acute observer of such detail, Middle Tennessee artist Camille Engel catches the elements others often overlook. A realist oil painter, Camille uses light, color, and texture to draw attention to the extraordinary qualities of marvelous and mundane subjects alike.
Capturing the details that make life rich, Camille believes that beauty—and even the divine—can be found in all things.
“Every morning is a fresh opportunity to find extraordinary joy in the most ordinary things,” she explains. “My art overflows out of that joy.”
That outlook accompanies a career that includes more than forty awards and an international following. Represented by the Sugarman Peterson Gallery in Santa Fe, her work is part of collections such as the Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt, The Chattanoogan Hotel, Metropolitan Nashville Government, the Tennessee State Museum, and the Ellen Noel Art Museum in Odessa, Texas.
“I live in Nashville and work with the Nashville Artist Guild (NAG),” she says. “I do smaller shows through that organization. I also do a lot of larger solo and group exhibition shows… I love Nashville. It’s been very good to me.”
No Accounting for Talent
Born in 1955 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Camille showed an interest in art as a little girl.
“My great-aunt Rae gave me my first Barbie doll in third grade,” she says. “This was in the early ages of Barbie, and I realized that the box’s images were illustrated and not photographed. When I noticed that, I began telling people that ‘When I grow up, I’m going to draw Barbies!’”
But this growing interest in art was not immediately encouraged. Fearing the uncertainty of an artist’s life, Camille’s mother encouraged her to pursue a more reliable career.
She explains, “My mother was a bookkeeper. Her dream for me was to be an accountant, which was higher than a bookkeeper. She wanted me to have a real job so I didn’t have to depend on anybody else. I tell people that had I become an accountant, I would be in prison and wouldn’t understand the mistake that put me there!”
Camille jokes that this mother-daughter dynamic has now come full circle. “Numbers are not my gift. And the irony there is that I encouraged my daughter to pursue her artistic desires. And where does she wind up working? An accounting department!”
Such concerns did not stop Camille, who found creative inspiration through exploring nature and sketching her discoveries. Recognizing that they had an artist on their hands, Camille’s aunt and stepfather supported her interests.
“He saw how creative I was,” Camille recalls. “And he would tell my mother, ‘Vicki, leave her alone! Can’t you tell she’s an artist?’”
Her talents were appreciated at school as well.
By 16, Camille had landed her first professional art job. Her high school selected her for a statewide vocational-technical pilot program. It was here that she studied commercial art in the afternoons.
That experience later helped Camille land a job on a department store’s advertising team, illustrating products and creating layouts.
“This was back when things were sketched out for the newspaper. The quality of photography transferred to newsprint wasn’t as clear and crisp as an illustration,” she explains.
Finding Sight in Darkness
After graduating from high school in 1973, Camille attended Tulsa Junior College for two years, taking night classes.
In 1975, she met a young man and married him after an eight-week courtship. She left college and her job, but soon returned to work at a local advertising agency, where she learned the business side of the industry and eventually decided to strike out on her own.
In 1978, Camille launched her own advertising agency.
“Random House Publishing came across my logo designs,” she explains. “They were launching new educational software for schools, and they asked me if I would be willing to hire staff to handle their graphic design. Delighted, I agreed, hiring two artists plus, regrettably, my husband as office manager.”
The marriage, however, had become physically abusive and manipulative. Camille’s husband gradually gained control over both her personal life and her business, eventually forcing her to hand the agency over to someone else.
Trapped in the relationship for eight years, Camille relocated with her husband to rural Arkansas. It was during this painful period that she began developing a way of looking at the world that would later become fundamental to her art.
“During the abuse, I was thinking about what was happening through a spiritual lens,” Camille recalls. “I felt like the Lord was telling me, ‘Find three things a day for which you are grateful.’ And I began to notice the beauty around me. I would pick up an apple and observe the little nuances in its skin. Or I would look closely at the African violet flowers near my windowsill, and I’d notice how they glistened.”
Camille was learning to find joy and beauty in circumstances that offered little of either.
“We adopted our daughter toward the end. She was just two and a half days old when we got her. And one day, when she was just a year old, I was holding her when my husband got really mad. In a moment of rage, he threw me up against the wall. And she began screaming in fear.”
The incident made the danger to both Camille and her daughter impossible to ignore.
“He convinced me that I was wonderful with children, and that I should leave our daughter with him to go to Africa as a nanny for missionaries,” she says.
Preparing to leave for missionary service, Camille visited her family to say goodbye.
“My Aunt Rae could tell something was off. She finally cornered me and said, ‘Something is wrong. I know something’s wrong. You’re not leaving this kitchen until you tell me what’s wrong.’ And then I burst into tears, telling her that my husband was sending me to Africa, and that I was there to say goodbye to everybody.”
Her aunt brought Camille’s mother into the conversation. Together, the two women convinced her that she had to leave her husband to protect herself and her daughter.
“Then and there, with just the weekend bag I packed for me and my daughter, I decided to leave my marriage, staying with my aunt,” she says.
A noncompete agreement Camille had signed after relinquishing her advertising agency prevented her from working in advertising in Tulsa. Familiar with Nashville and Dallas through her design work, she visited both cities in search of a place to begin again.
“I’d already designed album covers for MCA, as well as several Christian record companies in Nashville. So when I visited, I made contact with Aladdin Industries and a few other companies. They put me under contract to do graphic design. Having the promise of real work made the move to Nashville easy.”
Art, Direction, and Art Direction in Music City
Camille relocated to Nashville in late 1984, taking on brochure, logo, and annual report work for corporate clients including Aladdin, Fruit of the Loom, and Kitchen Art.
“Nashville ended up being a blessing!” Camille says. “I met all sorts of wonderful people—including my current husband, whom I married in ’86!”
She also designed album covers for the music industry.
“The joke that others would make was that if I designed an album cover for an artist, then that artist would become artist of the year,” Camille says, referring to work for musicians like Reba McEntire and George Strait. “Labels wanting album cover work often gave me their hottest stars.”
After 16 years of commercial work in Nashville, Camille wanted something more. In 2000, she contacted Cheekwood Estate and Gardens about adult art classes and was referred to Charles Brindley, whose freeform approach encouraged students to choose their own subjects.
For Camille, that freedom was intimidating.
“When you’re a professional working under creative parameters for decades, those parameters become your comfort zone. Now, it’s like, ‘Here’s the world, choose something.’ And you’re not sure where to go,” she explains.
Working through that discomfort, Camille found her groove in what she considers “unheralded subjects.”
“I went through a phase of painting things like rusty buckets,” Camille says. “And my stepdad would tell me, ‘Camille, you find beauty in everything! I see those buckets, and I want to sand them down and repaint them. You paint their rust, and the more beaten up things are, the more beauty you find in them.’ I wanted to bring that beauty out for other people to see in my work.”
At Cheekwood, several artists observing Camille would tell her, “You paint wrong.”
“And, of course, I’m so naive at the time, I had no idea that my intuitive style of painting followed the footsteps of the Dutch masters. They were known for painting in transparent glazes, starting with an underlying color and gradually building layers of color and detail to create luminosity.”
After concluding her studies at Cheekwood, Camille had her first public exhibition at the 2002 Main Street Festival in Franklin. She regards it as the moment she transitioned into being a fine artist.
“So I was there with my paintings in a sea of vendor tents on the street,” Camille recalls. “And a woman comes by, and she buys five of my paintings for her new house in downtown Franklin!”
A local reporter interviewed Camille early in the festival. At the end of the event, the reporter returned to her booth.
“She was standing in front of my paintings, studying them, and tears started rolling down her cheeks. And she turned around to tell me, ‘I don’t mean to offend you, but there’s just so much God in your work!’ And I got goosebumps.”
The encounter came only days after Camille had wrestled with a question about the purpose of her art.
“That reporter had no idea that only a few days before, I asked the Lord, ‘How can I glorify you by painting fruits and flowers?’ I had a strong urge to glorify God through my paintings because he helped me escape abuse and find joy. I was feeling guilty I wasn’t wooed to paint biblical stories. But in hearing that woman’s reaction, I knew I was doing exactly what I was supposed to do.”
Birds of a Feather
For Camille, the joy she finds in the process remains inseparable from the finished work.
“Painting is such a joyful, spiritual moment for me. And a lot of times, I cry at my easel,” Camille says. “And I don’t know if it’s because I’m noticing the detail of my subject, the process of the painting, or that it always feels cathartic to explore my creative side since I was held back from doing that for so many years.”
That connection between process, instinct, and skill also shapes the way Camille approaches commissioned work. She tells clients that they are hiring not only her technical abilities, but also her ideas and judgment—the combination of vision and experience that makes the finished work distinctly hers.
All of Camille’s work falls under realism, and she is a member of the International Guild of Realism (IGOR), where she currently maintains the honor of being the second-most-awarded member.
“I’ve won different IGOR awards for the work that I’ve done, including the Best Trompe L’oeil Award—which comes from the French phrase meaning ‘fool the eye’—and an International Artist’s Choice Award (IACA). So I’m not pigeonholed into making one type of painting. But so many people know me for my bird paintings, since the first one won an IACA. After winning that award, birds became what the galleries wanted from me. I observe birds in my backyard, study their movement and character,” Camille says.
For Camille, having her work held in the permanent collections of two museums represents a particular honor—and the fulfillment of a dream shared by artists everywhere. That recognition follows a broader museum presence: from 2017 through 2019, her solo exhibition, “My Tennessee Home: The Paintings of Camille Engel,” celebrated Tennessee’s official state symbols through stops across the region.
Her most recent IGOR honor came in June 2026, when “Goody Gumdrop” received the Best Trompe L’oeil Award. The painting depicts what appears to be a photograph of a bowl of gumdrops taped to a weathered wooden surface—until one gumdrop seemingly tumbles out of the photograph and casts its shadow on the board below.
“In this series, I combine surrealism with trompe l’oeil, and I always try to select a title that draws the viewer’s attention to the surrealist element of the painting,” Camille explains. “My goal is to trick the viewer’s eye, then stir the imagination.”
To heighten the illusion, Camille painted all five of the work’s apparent surfaces.
In June 2025, Camille received IGOR’s International Artist Publishing Award for “Rhapsody in Blue,” a figurative piece featuring a woman dancing underwater in a sheer dress and long scarf.
“I’m mostly known for my nature paintings. Doing ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ for IGOR’s exhibition was a fun challenge that let me play in the world of figurative paintings. I’ve always felt drawn to water, and was even the Oklahoma State Champion Water Ballet Soloist to the Junior Olympics. Being able to show the grace and ethereal sensation of being underwater is special to me.”
Camille continues creating new work for upcoming exhibitions. She is currently developing “Heaven & Earth,” a two-woman traveling exhibition with Peruvian-born Tennessee artist Clorinda Bell. Bell paints sacred art, while Camille draws inspiration from nature. Together, they are creating the work and booking venues for the developing exhibition.
“When teaching children, they always ask me which painting is my favorite. And my answer is, ‘It’s always the painting I just finished. I love to paint! I love creativity in any form. Find joy in the world around you and be creative!’”
For further information about Camille Engel, visit her website and social media.