Reflecting on Flora in Focus: The Studio Experience, October 2026
I think I’ve finally found the words for what I want my workshops to be.
It isn’t simply about teaching someone how to paint a protea.
Of course, the painting matters. I want people to learn how I see colour, light and form, to understand my process and to leave with new skills and more confidence than they arrived with.
But after this week’s Flora in Focus studio experience, I’ve been thinking about everything that happened around the painting.
Four women spent two days in my home studio. We painted, talked, shared food, drank far too much tea and coffee, laughed, looked at each other’s work and took plenty of little breaks along the way. Bob made himself part of the group, as he tends to do.
When I read their feedback afterwards, I was struck by how often they mentioned the things that weren’t actually about painting. The company, the food, the light, the relaxed atmosphere, the feeling of having time to concentrate on something creative.
Of course they talked about what they learnt too. Colour mixing. Blending. Understanding my process. Feeling more confident putting paint onto the canvas.
And they were proud of their paintings.
That made me think about what I am really trying to create when I open my studio to people.
I don’t want to simply teach someone to reproduce one of my paintings. I certainly don’t want four identical little Hayley Krüger paintings leaving my studio.
I want four people to make four paintings that are their own.
I want them to learn enough from me to make their own decisions, to become less afraid of the canvas and to trust themselves a little more.
But I also want them to have experienced something.
To have stepped away from ordinary life for a couple of days. To have eaten a beautiful lunch around the table, laughed with people they might not otherwise have met, spent time making something with their hands and remembered what it feels like to be completely absorbed in something simply because they want to do it.
That has made me rethink some of the little things I do in my workshops.
In future, I want to deliberately leave the studio for lunch. I want us to put our brushes down, stop looking at our paintings and sit somewhere else for a while.
Because I’m beginning to understand that those moments aren’t time taken away from the painting.
They are part of the experience.
And perhaps that is what I’ve been trying to create all along.
Not bigger workshops. Not more people.
Just a really good couple of days spent making something, learning something and enjoying being creative.
The painting is what you take home.
It’s what you hang on the wall and see months later, bringing back the memory of those two days.
The painting is the souvenir.
The experience is what I really want people to remember.
