Students who sign up for the Bermuda National Gallery’s photography camp come ready to pick up a camera.

But senior counsellor Rhea Gibbons has them drawing plants.

“What we try to do with the intermediate group is not just to focus on their photography skills but also to refine their observational skills and work with the co-ordination between their brain, their hand and their eyes,” explained Ms Gibbons, who has been volunteering with the gallery since she was a BHS student.

This is her third summer teaching their Youth Camera Action Photography Summer Camp.

The 23-year-old incorporates performance, poetry, drawing and photography into the programme, all hallmarks of her own artwork.

Middle school students are invited to choose their medium — charcoal, oil pastels or pencil to draw botanicals collected from Victoria Park.

“It’s about them becoming confident as artists and finding what they like to do,” she said. “Really getting them to familiarise themselves with different types of media.”

It’s a pursuit close to her heart.

At school, she did well in all subjects, but art was her calling.

She studied art and psychology at The Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts in England.

After graduating in 2015 she moved to China to teach for a year. Last September, she moved to Barcelona to do a studio arts programme and focus on her own craft.

“I love teaching, but there’s less exploring of what I want to do as an artist. Last year was about me giving myself time to be in that environment,” she said.

She will return to the Spanish city in September to begin her master’s degree in art therapy at Metàfora.

She credits her parents, Richard and Tracey Gibbons, for encouraging her to follow her heart.

“She always pushed me to learn Spanish,” Ms Gibbons said of her mother, a language teacher. “She thinks it’s really important for people to speak more than one language. She thinks it’s important for cultural understanding, but also for your brain.

“It’s also an important challenge for me. I realised that when I moved to China. I like having to think about what I say before I say it, to step outside my comfort zone and not rely on English.”

Her mother was also the catalyst for that move. She was teaching Spanish and English in Hangzhou when she suggested her daughter come on board as a substitute art teacher.

“It is a whole different universe from Bermuda,” Ms Gibbons said.

While there, she was encouraged by another colleague “to not live an expat life and to interact, meet people, make friends and to not be in English-speaking spaces”.

The two of them would hike to temples and explore the local food markets.

“After observing I started to understand what people are saying and how they use the language to communicate,” she said.

It was a pivotal year for Ms Gibbons.

“It made me want to continue on this path,” she said.

She hopes to follow her time in Barcelona to get her teacher qualification in another country.

“Anyone who knew me when I was younger, knew there was a lot of anger. Now there’s been a lot of personal growth and change. I have more of a positive outlook.”

The positivity is evident in her work.

“I now know what I want to say and I’m not afraid to say it,” said the ‘new media” artist, who typically creates installations.

In China, she focused on photography. Taking advantage of the well lit, “hectic” city, she worked on long exposures.

The contemporary art school in Lancaster drew her away from her traditional figurative work, which she found restrictive.

“They change you as an artist. You’re open to being pushed in certain directions because [you want to do well]. I wasn’t happy with that,’ she said.

“In Barcelona, I’ve taken some of the things I’ve learnt and am making things I am happy with.”

She tries to dispel the myth of artists being naturally talented with her students.

“When they make their art, when they devote their life to art, they work really hard,” she said.

“At the gallery, Dany [Pen] has always given me the opportunity to use my skills, to meet young Bermudians and help shape their artistic vision and support them.”

Her BHS art teacher Dan DeSilva was similarly supportive. “Academically, I’m somebody who is well-rounded but this is what I love to do. This is what I do to seek refuge in life when life is too much.

“I was like, why do anything else? Why not do what feels natural to you and what you enjoy in your heart?

“Then I saw the opportunity to help other people to experience something similar, where they’re using art in a self-directed way to heal themselves or at least to help themselves, or to say things that maybe they couldn’t express in other ways.”