Beach cottage at Indian Rocks Beach Credit: Shawn Dell Joyce

Florida artist Shawn Dell Joyce likes to paint outdoors. The French call it painting “en plein air,” and it appears to be a growing trend in the Tampa Bay area.

“Plein air has become the new golf. Seniors play golf all the time,” Joyce explains. “Many, who’ve gotten tired of golf or injured [themselves], have started plein air.”

But why?

“Because it’s fun, it’s an adventure, it’s exciting, and you get to go to these beautiful places and paint them,” says Joyce, “There’s a whole culture that’s grown up around plein air that wasn’t there 20 years ago.”

Joyce has been painting en plein air for about 30 years now. Twenty years ago, while living in New York, she founded a plein air painting school in the famously picturesque Hudson Valley area. Joyce has been a snowbird in the Tampa Bay area for several years, but it wasn’t until about three years ago that she started teaching plein air classes in Tampa Bay. Over the years, Joyce has become intimately familiar with the area. If you ask me, that familiarity comes specifically from setting her easel up all around Tampa Bay.

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Joyce works with the Dunedin Fine Art Center (DFAC), the Morean Arts Center in St. Petersburg, and the Beach Art Center in Indian Rocks Beach to deliver her plein air adventures to all of Pinellas County. At the classes/adventures, Joyce teaches students the challenges of plein air painting, from what type of equipment you’ll need to what kinds of hazards you might face (spoiler alert: gators and bugs).

“When you’re painting en plein air, you have two hours to capture the light,” says Joyce. It’s a skill that takes time and practice to develop, but Joyce is here to show you the way. “You have to be prepared to paint quickly.”

Given all these challenges, it kind of makes one wonder why anyone would choose plein air painting over painting in the studio. Joyce has the answer to this too.

“You have a visceral connection when you’re standing in the scene and painting it,” says Joyce. “It speaks to you in a way that it never would in a photo. You can see how the light reflects off the palm trees on every single palm frond. You can see how the color changes on the hibiscus. How the pelicans come and go. There’s movement in life.”

When we asked Joyce about her favorite places to paint in the Tampa Bay area, she listed over a dozen. When she got to no. 17, she paused and said, “I can give you more, but I don’t want to overwhelm.”

Without further ado, here’s Shawn Dell Joyce, in her own words, listing her top 10 places to paint in the Tampa Bay area:

Plein air painting at John’s Pass Credit: Shawn Dell Joyce

The Botanical Gardens This location in Largo is her number one favorite place to paint. They’re very artist-friendly. "You would probably bump into an artist painting there pretty much any day of the week," she said.

Heritage Village Shawn Dell Joyce’s second favorite place to paint because you get a taste of what old Florida was like, from log cabins and vintage cars to general stores and so forth. It’s just a wonderful slice of history. And it’s also very artist-friendly.

The Dunedin Marina Way in the back, there’s a hidden area where sailboat clubs meet. There’s a women’s sailboat club, called the Windlasses, that tends to go out every Thursday. Dell Joyce love setting up and painting them.

Tarpon Springs The Sponge Docks are a wonderful place to paint the opposite side of the street. You have the tourist area and the restaurants on the one side of the street. On the opposite side, there’s a sidewalk where the spongers pull up and dock. I love to paint the sponge boats.

Vinoy Park It has a little bit of everything. You can get an incredible view of downtown St. Pete right at sunset. Joyce teaches nocturne painting classes, and when the class paints in St. Pete, that’s where the paint the nocturnes. "You have the lights coming on in downtown just as the sun sets," she said. "It’s really beautiful."

Hammock Park This spot in Dunedin is really good for getting trails and trees.

George McGough Nature Park This is a really good place if you want to get some of the natural flora and fauna in Largo. Joyce is really big on indigenous species, especially gators and such. "It’s really fun to put gators in the paintings. And that’s one of the few places where you can observe them safely," she said. "I’ve had them sneak up on me when I was painting before."

John’s Pass Ah, the wooden walkway. It’s so colorful and rich in subject matter with the cute little restaurants and so forth. And then directly in front of it are colorful boats, kayaks, and the water. So that’s a favorite.

Bellaire and Indian Rocks Beach There are a couple of really beautiful places to paint on these beaches. "I teach nocturne painting on the beach there, and you can catch the sun setting through the sea grapes and the sand dunes, with sea oats framing it," she said. "[Then you can] run down to the beach and paint the lights of the beach houses as they start to come on at sunset. That’s really pretty, too."

Sand Key Rich blue water and lots of fun beach scenes. It tends to be kind of windy there, so it’s a good place to catch sunbathers in the wind. There’s a canal with some boats that go through, so that’s fun to catch some of the boats passing by Clearwater and heading out to the Gulf.