In Plein Terms
by Jill Duff-Hoppes
Artist Joyce Shelton has reinvented herself more times than she can count.
A Jersey girl who moved to Central Florida in the early 1980s, Joyce has spent most of her career as an illustrator and product designer and is now a fine-art painter. When opportunity knocks, she answers, even if that means stepping completely out of her comfort zone. Joyce recently did just that by participating in two local – and quite prestigious – plein-air paint-outs. En plein air is a French term for painting outdoors, in the open air.
“I don’t know where I get this chutzpah from,” says the 73-year-old, who lives in Seminole County just outside Maitland with her musician husband, renowned drummer Eddie Metz. “I’ve got to have a challenge, I guess.”
After earning an associate’s degree from the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale, Joyce worked as a fashion illustrator for major department stores in South Florida and Orlando. When the stores replaced illustrators with photographers, she segued into being a freelance illustrator for local and national clients while also exhibiting her own monotype artwork at juried fine art shows. Joyce has also enjoyed a lucrative career in art licensing and excels in a variety of media including oils, acrylics, and her favorite: pastels.
On a lark in 2025, she entered the Wekiva Paint Out’s Quick Draw competition, which required participants to complete a painting in two hours at Wekiva Island in Longwood. Joyce was accustomed to working indoors in her home studio, not to painting outside as strangers watched her progress.
By the end of the contest, she was covered in bug bites but had won first place. As the winner, Joyce was invited to be a featured artist at the 2026 Wekiva Paint Out. Feeling emboldened, Joyce also applied – and was accepted – to be a featured artist at the 2026 Winter Park Paint Out at the Albin Polasek Museum & Sculpture Gardens.
For Joyce, the weeklong Wekiva event, held in February, proved to be grueling yet rewarding. Artists stayed in cabins at Wekiwa Springs State Park, which meant lugging her heavy art supplies from the cabin to her car to whatever spot at the park or Wekiva Island she had chosen to paint that day. Weather was also a hurdle to overcome because Central Florida experienced a freeze that week. Undeterred, Joyce bundled up and kept painting. After the pieces were finished, she framed and delivered them to Wekiva Island’s wet room to be displayed for sale.
At the Winter Park Paint Out in April, the weather was warmer, but the schedule was just as demanding. Artists painted on the grounds of the Polasek, along Park Avenue, and at other nearby locales. Joyce also gave a well-received pastel demonstration, creating a vibrant floral painting on the spot at the museum and answering questions from art lovers and patrons.
“Every day during the Paint Out, you get up real early and try to run somewhere and catch the light,” she says, adding that the goal is to produce one or two new paintings daily for the wet room. “It’s exhausting, but the camaraderie of the other artists makes it so much fun. I really learned a lot.”
As with the Wekiva Paint Out, evenings at the Winter Park event were spent socializing with fellow artists, event organizers, and art patrons. She did very well, selling pieces at both paint outs. Now, with two plein-air events under her belt, Joyce is ready for more.
“I’m always looking for the next avenue, the next path,” she says. “I’m curious and when something sparks my interest, I’ve got to go for it.”
To learn more about the artist and her work, visit JoyceShelton.com.