Umbria Through the Expressive Lens

Join Renee Lynn for an all-inclusive, seven-night creative immersion in the heart of Italy. Nestled in the rolling hills of Umbria near Terni, La Romita School of Art provides an inspiring home for exploring photography as an expressive art form while experiencing the rich history, culture, and flavors of the region. Our accommodations are in a former Capuchin monastery. Home-cooked Umbrian meals, complete with local wine, nourish us each day, while our classroom, a converted chapel, offers the perfect studio environment for image review, lessons, and discussion.

Over the course of our stay, Renee guides you through the creative process using the teachings of her Expressive Lens workshop as a way of deepening personal vision. Techniques of abstraction, the elements of art, multiple exposures, intentional camera movement, and layering are the processes used to take a traditional photograph to an expressive one. With daily excursions to some of Umbria’s most remarkable towns and landscapes, there is an opportunity to explore all the techniques. The blend of on-location photography and studio sessions cultivates both technical skill and artistic exploration.

Our itinerary includes the following highlights of Umbria’s treasures:

• Orvieto—with its dramatic clifftop setting, medieval streets, and magnificent cathedral
• Villa Lante—a celebrated Renaissance garden, displaying symmetry and interplay between art and nature
• Assisi—steeped in spiritual history and portrayed in Giotto’s frescoes in the Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi
• San Gemini—along the Via Flaminia (the ancient Roman road) and one of the “Most Beautiful Villages of Italy”

Each day balances time in the field, taking advantage of local and seasonal opportunities, with reflective sessions in our chapel studio, where you share work, receive image review, and explore how to transform observations into artistic images. By week’s end, we return home with a deeper understanding of how to translate personal experience into an expressive visual language.

Our home for the week, La Romita, was established in 1548 by the Capuchin Order and served as monastery until the mid 19th Century when it was purchased by the Piacentini family for its olive orchards. Enza Quargnali, great-granddaughter of that family and accomplished artist, established the La Romita Art School in 1966. For 60 years artists of all forms and media have stayed at La Romita and created in the beautiful Umbrian hill country, exploring art and culture under the same olive trees as the monks. La Romita is still operated by the same family.

Renee spent three weeks at La Romita School of Art, studying watercolor. She was inspired by the entire experience and says, “Living in the former monastery, painting in the chapel studio, and exploring Umbria’s medieval towns left a deep imprint on my creative journey. The hilltop streets of Orvieto, the gardens of Villa Lante, the cathedral of Assisi, all shaped how I see and experience the world as an artist. That transformative time continues to resonate with me, and now, more than twenty years later, I’m so delighted to return. Instead of brushes and watercolor washes, we’ll use the camera to create painting-like photographs through expressive techniques of abstraction. Just as I once learned to interpret Umbria with brushstrokes, we’ll explore how to transform what you see and feel into images filled with color, texture, and personal meaning.”