DESTINATION INSPIRATION

Hidden Cove High Noon (Boyd Hill

2019, watercolor, 18 x 24 in. Preserve, St. Pete, FL) Collection the artist 2021, pastel, 24 x 18 in. Plein air Available from artist Plein air

SHAWN DELL JOYCE

BLOOMING WHERE PLANTED

Ever since an unexpected event altered the course of her life, this artist and activist has found purpose in combining her love of the land and plein air painting, no matter where she calls home.

——— BY SHAWN DELL JOYCE ———

Growing up on a citrus farm in Brownsville, Texas, I fully expected to take over from my father until a cruel twist of fate forced me to change course. In the early 1980s, a deep freeze hit South Texas and destroyed all the citrus trees. The farm went bankrupt and was sold to developers, and I went north to college, where I majored in painting and drawing. For years, the loss of the family farm tinged my art with an edge of heartbreak. During college, I moved cross-country and wound up in New York City, where I found success in the blossoming East Village art scene of the 1990s. There I worked as an

SHAWN DELL JOYCE imbues her pastels with a sense of place and purpose.

Casting a Long Shadow (St. Pete, FL)

2021, pastel, 16 x 12 in. Available from artist Plein air

artist’s apprentice to actor Willem Dafoe and oil painter Mark Kostabi, among others. During this time, I founded an anti-censorship group and held a series of alternative space exhibits. All the while, however, I missed the warmth of the fields back home.

On a motorcycle trip out of the city one day, I visited the Hudson Valley and fell in love with the bucolic landscape. I relocated and began visiting the sites where the Hudson River School painted, drawing inspiration from the way they used Transcendentalism to connect people to the region in a way that made them want to preserve and protect it from the iron forges and railroads of the 1850s.

ARTIST AS ACTIVIST

I began to speak out as an activist and environmentalist, and was offered a weekly column called “Sustainable Living” in the regional newspaper. Promoting localism and sustainable agriculture, the column got picked up by newspapers across the country. Through the exposure, I came to the attention of climate activists, which led to my training with former Vice President Al Gore and leading climatologists.

In an effort to connect people with the land that sustains them, I also began a series of plein air classes on small farms in the Hudson Valley. Soon 50 people were showing up on a weekly basis. To keep up with interest, I hired additional teachers and started a plein air school called Wallkill River School, inspired by the conservationist philosophy of the Hudson River School and my own experience of losing the family farm.

When you paint the landscape, you slow down and study it; you notice things that you would never see from a car window on the highway; you fall in love with it. My goal was to connect people viscerally with the land and give them a reason to preserve it, to make stakeholders out of tourists and commuters.

As the school gained support in the region, we were able to establish a permanent home in a two-story historic brick house in Montgomery, New York. With “creative placemaking” (the use of art to create a sense of place in the community)

(ABOVE LEFT) Church’s View (Olana, Hudson, NY), 2019, pastel, 13 x 15 in., private collection, plein air • (ABOVE) Miss Alena (Tarpon Springs, FL), 2019, pastel, 20 x 16 in., available from artist, plein air • (LEFT) Happy Place (Dunedin Causeway, FL), 2021, pastel, 12 x 16 in., available from artist, plein air

(TOP) Backroads (Staunton, VA), 2016, pastel, 16 x 20 in., private collection, plein air • (ABOVE) Farm in the Foothills (Staunton, VA), 2016, pastel, 16 x 20 in., private collection, plein air • (RIGHT) Sound of Angels Singing, 2018, pastel, 24 x 18 in., collection of Wallkill River School, Montgomery, NY, plein air

as our mission, we began holding benefit art auctions on small farms and hosting other events that mixed artists with farmers to create cultural tourism. I painted nonstop during this time, capturing farms and open spaces in pastel, teaching workshops, and participating in plein air competitions around the country, including Staunton, Virginia.

Dedicated to pursuing a professional career as a painter, I retired as executive director of the Wallkill River School in 2018 and relocated to Dunedin, Florida, a small Celtic town in Tampa Bay. There I immediately developed Plein Air Adventure, a series of outdoor painting classes. Each week, I take a dedicated group of painters, both locals and snowbirds, to places off the beaten track. We visit “Old Florida” sites like historic theaters, hidden bayous, and quiet beaches, and we paint. These places offer a taste of local color and flavor you wouldn’t find in the more touristy areas.

A CHANGE OF PALETTE BUT NOT SENSIBILITY

Besides a change of landscape — with tropical plants and birds taking the place of fields and machinery — came a change in my palette. The violets, siennas, and ultramarines of the northern climate gave way to the vibrant phthalo blues, oranges, and green-golds of Florida.

Now when I go back to the Hudson Valley, as I do every year to teach plein air pastel workshops, the first thing I notice is that the sky is ultramarine. That’s because the elevation is so high and there’s not as much water vapor in the air as in Florida, where skies are cerulean and phthalo blue.

Florida attracts people for its variety of unique features — the wild bird sanctuaries, beautiful beaches, and bayous — but these are the very areas under pressure of development by population growth and climate change. In my work, I chronicle these places at this particular point in time, focusing on the forgotten Florida landscapes. My work in creative placemaking continues.

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ABSTRACTION TO REALISM

Shawn Dell Joyce has two studios — a dedicated lanai (Florida-speak for an enclosed porch) and a smaller indoor studio. With ventilation assured, and dust easier to filter out, an outdoor studio is a good fit for a pastel artist. To protect her pastels, she stores them in a set of weatherproof cabinets. Her easel is mounted on a taboret with rustproof storage. She uses the indoor studio mainly as a recording and broadcasting studio for her online classes. Joyce uses a combination of pastels, but mostly Rembrandt for underpainting and Mount Vision Pastels for adding layers of rich color. She uses her hands to blend, donning liquid gloves as a barrier cream to protect herself from toxic pigments. She works exclusively on Ampersand Pastelbord.

THE ARTIST’S PROCESS

Joyce starts with a thumbnail sketch that identifies at least five values, as well as the focal point. “I simplify the landscape into abstract blocks of value and color,” she says. “The focal point is always where the darkest dark and lightest light meet. It’s important to be aware of this and make sure you put the focal point(s) in the most advantageous place.”

Next, Joyce makes a quick color study to lay out her palette. She may bring a hundred pastels to a plein air site, but uses only a handful of sticks for each painting.

“I make a color study to try out the colors, then separate the pastels I’ve chosen in an easel box,” says Joyce. “This is my VIP seating area, and only the pastels that will be used in the painting get to hang out there.” Joyce has a Sienna pastel box that attaches to her En Plein Air Pro easel. The box has values from 5 to 1 numbered on the side, and she sets up her pastels according to value. Most often, Joyce paints methodically from dark to light, or from 5 to 1.

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Once her palette is laid out according to her color study, Joyce is ready to begin painting. She paints quickly and methodically, working a large surface in under two hours so that she captures the light at that particular moment. Her typical plein air surfaces are 16 x 20, 13 x 36, and 18 x 24 inches.

“Twenty-five years of plein air work have given me a confident hand,” she says. “I can be accurate and quick on location, then take the painting home and live with it for a few days. This helps me see areas that need a little ‘pop’ of color or edges that may need to be softened or darkened.”

In the studio, Joyce’s technique is a little more relaxed. “I still start out with a value sketch and color study, but often will do these days ahead of time. Also, I don’t always work from dark to light in the studio. Most often I work from back to front. I look at what is furthest away and start blocking in the distant sky and reflection.

“If I’m painting large (a typical studio painting is 24 x 36 inches), I may start with my surface flat instead of on the easel so I have maximum saturation of pigment into the tooth of the board.” She starts with large abstract shapes, covering the entire surface. “Once the pigment is in the tooth of the board, it’s easier to blend into it,” she notes. She then refines the shapes by scumbling and sometimes blending, especially cloud shapes in the sky.

(ABOVE) Sunset Through Sea Oats (Indian Rocks Beach, FL)

2020, pastel, 12 x 16 in. Private collection Plein air

(TOP LEFT) Homecoming

2019, pastel, 18 x 24 in. Private collection Studio from plein air studies

(LEFT) Racing the Storm

2019, pastel, 24 x 36 in. Available from Woodfield Fine Art Studio from plein air studies