Iconic: Paint St Pete Artists
Barbara Beyhl
Barbara Beyhl is a self-taught artist who has been attracted to art and painting all her life. She had a long and productive career in pharmaceuticals that allowed minimal time for her to explore her love for art. In 1996 she resigned to sail the Caribbean for two years. During those years her time was often spent drawing, painting or exploring. When it was necessary to return to work she resettled in St. Petersburg, FL, and committed herself to artistic expression as an essential part of life. Since that time she has been studying under local artists and taking classes at the Morean and The Art Student League NYC. Barbara has worked to express herself and develop her style as a representational painter primarily in working in watercolor. She often paints landscapes around St. Pete and Pass-a-Grille. She launched her website August 2021 and gained gallery representation at St. Pete Artworks in 2022. Her works are on display at St. Pete Artworks; at the Eye Institute West, and in the ASL’s 2021 & 2022 Salon Shows. She has participated in many local shows throughout the area.
“My work is largely representational with a focus on landscapes and still life in water media. Though I do work with photos, I prefer to paint directly while observing a scene as I feel it helps me see more clearly the depth in shadows and the beautiful nuances in the lights. In my art, I hope to spark a connection to others that might convey the magic and beauty that surrounds us.”
Bill Castleman
Bill Castleman’s plein-air paintings capture on canvas his love for his native Florida landscape. Born in Pensacola in 1940, Bill has been an artist most of his adult life. After serving as a technical illustrator for the U.S. Marine Corps, Bill went on to study art at The Ringling School of Art and Design in Sarasota, Florida, graduating with a certificate in design and illustration. He had careers in aerospace and advertising before beginning a teaching career that lasted 25 years. Bill’s work marries his talent and energy with his enthusiasm for the outdoors. His characteristic deft touch with his paintings inbues each scene with a freshness and vitality that invites the viewer to visit time and time again. Bill’s work can be found in the Suntan Art Center and Rumfish Grille in St. Pete Beach.
“My painting theory is simple…..try to capture the essence of a scene. In doing so I hope to give the viewer enough visual information to stir their imagination. My challenge is creating work that raises the awareness of our disappearing wilderness. By painting in oils I create the wide variety of colors and textures that depict a sense of purity and timelessness. I find great delight in viewers sharing their ah-ha moment.”
Shawn Dell Joyce
Shawn Dell Joyce was born in Texas in 1965 and grew up on the border in Brownsville Tx. She worked in her family’s citrus orchards until an unseasonable frost killed the trees in 1982. This loss changed the trajectory of her career from farmer to artist.
She went to art school at University of North Texas in Denton, and studied Semiotics with artist Vernon Fisher, then transferred to San Francisco Art Institute in 1987. Her real education happened as an artist’s apprentice in SoHo section of NY where she worked in several artist’s studios until leaving the city for the beautiful farmlands North of the city and began teaching plein air classes in 2000, and continues weekly to this day in Tampa Bay.
She founded a plein air school with an Arts and Agricultural mission based on the historic Hudson River School, called the Wallkill River School of Art. It still exists today as a nonprofit arts organization with a mission of bringing cultural tourism to the Hudson Valley region through plein air painting workshops and events on local farms, historic sites and open spaces.
Joyce has won many prestigious awards for plein air painting, and is a signature member of New York Plein Air Painters (NYPAP), and International Plein Air Painters (IPAP), and has been featured in many national newspapers and magazines like the New York Times, Plein Air Magazine, Plein Air Podcast with Eric Rhoads, Pastel Journal Magazine, Tampa Bay Magazine. She is represented by six galleries around the country including Wallkill River School in NY, Woodfield Fine Art in St. Pete, and Lakeside Inn Gallery in Mount Dora, FL. She teaches workshops in pastel and plein air techniques across the country in Staunton, VA, Olana, NY, Tampa Bay Florida, and is included in museum collections in the Georges Pompidou Museum in France and the Museum of Modern Art in NY. She recently won the Creative Pinellas grant for established artists in 2023.
Kerry Didday
“I graduated from the University of Cincinnati at the college of Design, Art and Architecture and began my creative life as an Art Director with a fortune 500 company and as an artist at local art shows. After a few years I founded an award winning national marketing and design firm as President and Creative Director.
“During those years I remained active in fine arts by teaching and painting with further studies at the University of Cincinnati, The Cincinnati Art Academy at the Art Museum and Artist Magazine.
“I am currently a full time artist, painting from my studio in Florida, teaching acrylic painting and performing workshops. I have continued studies with the Dazzle Art Group and have attended workshops with Carol Frye, Skip Lawrence, Alex Powers, Katherine Chang Liu, Mary Alice Brackman and Jean Pederson.
“I have experience in several differing styles. I look at each painting as an adventure in creative design and determine my direction from the subject or location at hand.”
John Doyle
“I started drawing and painting when I was very young, and have continued to do so all my life. I work in several mediums, including watercolor, acrylic and pastel.
Living in Florida, and being an avid sailor, the majority of my work focuses on seascapes. I’ve displayed my work in several local galleries and art exhibits throughout the area.
I work primarily from photos I’ve taken in my travels by sea and land.”
Joyce Ely Walker
Joyce Ely Walker lives and works in Palmetto, Florida. She received her B.S. degree in Art Education from Florida State University and continued graduate studies at the University of South Florida, Maryland Institute College of Art and Rhode Island School of Design. Her work is included in the permanent collections of Poynter Institute for Media Studies, the Tampa Museum of Art, Merrill Lynch Corporation, St. Petersburg College, the State College of Florida, Rollins College and the Pinellas County Center for the Arts. Residencies and Fellowships, including Alfred Summer Place, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Vermont Studio Center, Hambidge Center for the Arts and Sciences, the Jentel Foundation, and the Brush Creek Arts Foundation have provided a great variety of landscapes for th painter to explore.
Sandy Hall
Plein air painting for a decade, Sandy loves painting scenes that tell a story or prompts a reaction. She currently resides in Indiana but spends time in Florida, St. Petersburg area, each winter. Manipulating media of all sorts, her work is an assortment of subjects from her travels upon retiring as a junior high visual arts educator. She has won numerous awards in the state of Indiana competitions.
“No matter what subject I study, I love to take a fearless approach to process. Like Alice in Carroll’s wonderful book, I love to explore and discover diverse ways to bring life to my ideas. There are risks and it’s a matter of taking a less formulaic approach and letting intuition drive the composition.”
Currently I am working on mixed media collage renderings. I just finished an oil of shammocks in a window. Most of my work is representational but I love exploring color, shape and abstraction.”
Joanna Hammond
Joanna Hammond is a prize winning artist who has exhibited at the Seacoast Art Association in Exeter, NH, the Newburyport Art Association in Newburyport, Ma and the Largo Art Association in Largo, FL. She was co-founder of the Bridge Gallery in Newburyport, a cooperative which was in existence from 2006-2013.
“I am primarily a plein air artist. My work is inspired by my love of Impressionism. My usual media are watercolor and acrylic.”
Janie Haskins
Janie Haskins is an impressionistic oil painter from St Petersburg, FL. She is known for her colorful depictions of landscapes, birds, and life in Florida. Janie loved drawing and painting from an early age, but she didn’t begin pursuing art seriously until about 10 years ago. Before that, she worked as a newspaper reporter and then a lawyer representing entertainment industry clients in Los Angeles. Janie has studied with some of the premier landscape painters in the country and has won awards at regional plein air competitions. She has a studio at the Arts Xchange in St. Pete’s Warehouse Arts District.
“I’m an oil painter who explores the human connection to the natural world. Many of my works depict everyday sights in the Florida landscape, or our interactions with nature.
“My work is almost always based on plein air studies or photographs I have taken, because my personal experience with a subject is integral to my painting process. I often begin my plein air work with a value sketch. I then block in major shapes and colors before refining my drawing and adding details.
“I strive for a loose and painterly quality in my paintings. I enjoy painting the effects of light and shadow on a sunny day, and I’m drawn to the bright colors and exotic flora and fauna we’re blessed with here in Florida.”
Kim Wilder Hinson
Award-winning artist Kim Wilder Hinson started drawing as soon as she could hold a pencil, and if the vast quantity of paper scraps her mother saved over the years are any indication, her parents were proud of their daughter’s abilities. Art lessons weren’t available in her small North Carolina town, so during childhood Kim relied on studying Walter Foster’s “learn to draw” books and drawing everything she saw around her.
A graphic design career put drawing and painting on hold for thirty years. In 2017, Kim and her husband house sat for an artist in Scotland who was kind enough to allow full use of her studio and materials during the month they were in residence. Thanks to the generosity of this artist, Kim rediscovered her love of painting.
Kim works in several mediums, but her favorite is soft pastels. She also enjoys plein air painting wherever in the world she happens to be.
Her work hangs in private collections in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia.
“A self-taught artist, I’ve drawn and painted for as long as I can remember. I had no access to art lessons in the small town where I grew up, so I learned to draw using books like Walter Foster’s Learn to Draw.
“My favorite medium is soft pastel. This was the first color medium I explored as a child, and I still love the ease with which I can paint both loosely when painting landscapes or architecture en plein air and in sharp detail when painting an animal portrait. I love the vibrant pigments of soft pastel and the immediacy of the mark making. I also enjoy working in acrylic.”
Patricia Kluwe Derderian
Artist Patricia Kluwe Derderian paints with a combination of expressiveness and confident brushstrokes. Her paintings are marked by the efficient linework and vibrant energy of fashion drawing, and a bright color palette that is all her own. Through her paintings, she captures both public and intimate spaces and the ways we gather and share these places.
Patricia developed a love for drawing while still a young child in Brazil before majoring in architecture. Now a painter based in Pinellas county, her paintings can be found in collections around the world.
“I have always loved to walk to places. I would find as many ways as I could to stroll from one place to another even if I had to move to the opposite sidewalk, just for a different and exciting new perspective. Later on, I majored in architecture and thought a lot about our cities, buildings and spaces and the way they induce us into behaving and interacting in certain ways. It fascinates me how much that can dictate – or at least hint – our perceptions and feelings.
“Through my paintings I explore the memories and feelings connected to these spaces and the people that were a part of that unique moment in time, sharing and interacting, like co-creators of my own life. These crucial moments that for many reasons – some obvious, some, a mystery to me – are still now dancing in my mind, living with their own lines, colors, and rhythm.”
Alice Levy
“I taught myself how to paint and draw while still in grammar school, mainly from life and copying. I have since abandoned the realistic copying for a much more individualized, almost impressionist approach. When painting in various media, I see my own version of the natural world. I basically use acrylic, water color or pastel to quickly ignite my perception onto paper. I may have a general idea but never know where I will be taken.”
Vanessa Montenegro
Vanessa Montenegro was born and raised in Lima, Peru. In her late teens, she migrated to Florida to attend college and has been living here for over 20 years now. Vanessa holds an A.A. in Fine Arts from Miami Dade Community College and New World School of the Arts, as well as a B.F.A. in Fine Arts and Finance from Florida International University. This education has prepared her for a successful career as a full-time fine artist. Vanessa’s work has been recognized with numerous awards, and her art can be found in both private collections and public installations throughout the state.
“I love painting outdoors. The colors, shapes, and beauty of nature inspire me. My paintings are an explosion of artistic movement and vibrant colors, just like a late afternoon on a Florida lake bursting with ever-changing colors, shapes, life, and emotions. Depending on the moment, the same place can be pure awe, pure joy, pure Zen, or pure drama.
My plein air art focuses on showcasing the beauty of nature. My collection, which is called “Little Sketches For Bigger Ideas,” is a reminder of how wonderful our planet is. I try to capture the ever-changing color, light, and texture of the world that surrounds me. I get inspired by the beauty of Florida, its animals, nature, people, streets, and sports. I aim to tell a story through my art, conveying the wonder and beauty of the world around us.
All my plein air oil paintings are created using non-toxic oils, without using solvents, and painted on plein air cartons or wood. I aim to make my art as eco-friendly as possible, looking for ways to reduce its impact on the environment.
“I hope that by creating pieces that are friendlier to the environment, I can inspire others to appreciate the world’s beauty. I want my art to encourage people to take a moment to appreciate the beauty that surrounds us.”
Sarah Schaller
Artist Sarah Schaller considers herself truly blessed to call both Florida and Wisconsin home. She grew up in Northern Wisconsin and has always been drawn to and inspired by the outdoors, the landscape as well as the wildlife with which we coexist. She is equally captivated by Florida and all its natural beauty.
Sarah earned her degree in Fine Arts from the University of Oshkosh and has painted murals for many years while raising a family. She has recently fallen in love with Plein Air Painting and has won awards at several Plein Air competitions in recent years.
“I am primarily a representational artist who works both outdoors and in the studio. I have really fallen in love with Plein Air painting and enjoy the challenge of capturing the fleeting light, the encounters with people and sometimes wildlife while painting. I work most often in oil but also use acrylic and watercolor which works great for traveling, which is one of my biggest inspirations.”
Brittany Worlinsky
Brittany Worlinsky has exhibited with curators from the Huffington Post Arts Blog, Chocolate and Art Show LA, Proxy Place Gallery, Jamie Brooks Fine arts, and House of Wren, along with exhibiting nationally in Florida, Virginia, Washington, Missouri and California and internationally in Korea. Her paintings were featured in “The Party” movie, directed by Julianna Robinson, recently exhibited in Oceanside in Malibu and in Bergamot Station in Santa Monica.
