ArtPrize 2025: Camille Knouff’s ‘Sprawl’
25 Sept. 2025
By Justin Tiemeyer
Contributing WriterCamille Knouff’s, “Sprawl” is a whimsical woodland oil painting on display at The Atrium at Uccello’s Downtown (125 Ottawa Ave NW). “It’s a really pretty location,” Knouff said. “I wish it was a little bit more known.”
To call The Atrium a “really pretty” venue might be the understatement of the century. Though tucked away in the Ledyard Building, it is a gallery that puts most art museums to shame. There is ample room for wall-hung art and sculptures, space for visitors to amble around in awe, and surprisingly good lighting.
The B.O.B. might be a harbor for well-known, established artists, but The Atrium is certainly one of the best places for artists with an eye, and this is where Knouff comes in. Her “Sprawl” depicts a bat, a frog, a snail, and a number of other creatures, with a mixture of storybook illustration playfulness and fine arts painting chops.
“I am a big fan of James C. Christensen and Richard Scarry. It would be a dream to illustrate a book one day,” Knouff said. “I got the idea for the painting ‘Sprawl’ from seeing how cities and communities are expanding into each other. I was walking through a wooded area between apartments, condos, and a park. The accidental natural preserve spaces, created by the expansion of neighborhoods, contain so many different creatures that are having to share the same living space. Birds, deer, raccoons, opossum, frogs all living with one another. It got me thinking about how we as people, in certain places, are all living closer and closer to one another and all the different situations that arise from that.”
After earning her fine arts degree at East Carolina University in Greenville, NC, Knouff received a second degree in computer animation at Full Sail University. Knouff then went to work for Out of Our Minds Animation Studio in Winston-Salem. “I loved working there,” Knouff said. “It was the best. I was doing exactly what I went to school for. I was doing fine art, and I was doing computer animation.”
The Triangle sprawl in North Carolina, per Knouff, is “completely congested.” It started with highway I-40, and they just kept adding loops, I-140, I-240, all the way up to I-640. “I don’t think they were thinking about it growing so much,” Knouff said. “Going all the way out to where my mom lives, so far away from Raleigh, it’s a microcosm of grocery stores. It’s crazy.”
Camille Knouff’s “Sprawl” is on display at The Atrium at Uccello’s Downtown (125 Ottawa Avenue NW), and its Vote ID is 40860. The whimsical woodland oil painting is for sale. You can follow Knouff’s art beyond ArtPrize on Instagram using handle @_camille.artist_ or on the websites camille-knouff.squarespace.com and cameldamsel.threadless.com.
