The family that paints together ...

Destin Log cartoonist Dill Beaty didn’t grow up dreaming of a career in art.

“I kind of stumbled into it,” Beaty told The Log. “I graduated high school and didn’t have any direction at all. I liked to draw, and there was a very good art school in Nashville, so I thought we’d give it a try.

“As I studied it and studied art history and was able to go to Italy in 1960 and study for a summer ... Seeing all the old masters, I guess I was just hooked.”

The results of being hooked are now visible in Destin Library’s Calhoun Room where some of Beaty’s paintings are on display, along with those of his wife, Julie, and those of two of their four daughters, Krista Beaty and Kefrin Woodham.

A native of Tennessee, Dill Beaty began his career in Nashville as an art director, photographer and head of art services for two record companies. He met Julie, a Californian, in the 1960s when he went to San Francisco. They celebrate their 45th anniversary this year.

“We were not brought together by art,” Beaty said. “I was involved in the counterculture — she was not as active in social things ... It’s just recently she started painting. She’s the prolific painter of the family; she probably does two or three canvases a week. I just paint when the muse calls me.”

Julie Beaty also owned and operated the Deer’s Nest Gallery in Santa Rosa Beach for 15 years, and some of her paintings are now on display at Graffiti’s in Baytowne Wharf.

Beaty said Julie’s and his daughters’ interest in art had inspired him to resume painting outside of his commercial work.
Woodham, who graduated college with a double major in graphic design and drawing, lives in Miramar Beach with her family. Krista Beaty has an associate’s degree from Okaloosa Walton College, her father said, and has a passion for sculpture, some of which is on display in the Calhoun Room.

“She’s the one that really wants to make art her life,” Beaty told The Log.

Like many Destin residents, the Beatys visited the area for years before making a permanent move: “I have an uncle and an aunt who had a house here, a summer home in Crystal Beach — in those days it was not called Crystal Beach —and we would come down every year for eight or 10 years, using that as a vacation home.

“My wife, being a Californian, never adjusted to the Tennessee winters. One morning, she got out of bed and said ‘I’m going to move to Florida — you can come along if you want.’”