For Cyndi Eastburn, her latest adventure has been operating her own art gallery at The Shops of Grayton Beach.

Filled with colorful, whimsical beach scenes, Cyndi has brought her own brand of fun to her art.

“I remember being in the fifth grade and just knowing I would be an artist,” she said.

Cyndi took high school art classes in contour drawing and while in college learned how to draw using the right side of her brain. But, still didn’t feel that she was experiencing her true creative side. After college her father encouraged her to find a real career and “go be a secretary,” while her mother kept telling her she had real artistic talent.

For a while she tried her hand at “real jobs.” That is when she signed on to do set design for a “goofy, off the wall” movie titled “West from North, Go South.” Cyndi said she also had a small extra part in the film as the “dead body in grave.”

Not too long after that she found herself recruited to top the pyramid in a water ski team at Cypress Gardens.

“I was given a costume and told to run to the end of the dock, and when the skier comes by, jump on his shoulders,” she said.

That experience came in handy when she moved to the Destin area.

She had been living on a sailboat for seven months prior to settling down in Destin, sailing along the Gulf Coast from Alabama to Mexico. The journey to the Florida Panhandle was more of an adventure than she expected. 

“We had 20-foot seas coming back,” she said. “You could have slalom skied the whole way back. We had six hours of swells.”

When she first came to Destin, she worked as a decorator with Sand Castle Designs. But, that wasn’t what she felt she really should be doing. “I was a frustrated decorator.”

Then she read a book that changed her life: “Living by Your Brush Alone,” by Edna Wagner Piersol. Cyndi decided to follow her first love of art, and soon opened her original art gallery in Seagrove. Since August, she has been in her new shop in The Shops of Grayton Beach.

“I’m just enjoying the journey,” she said. “I’ve had lots of jobs. I didn’t just do something over and over again. It’s been a real journey. It’s made me who I am.”
Cyndi works mainly in oils and acrylics. Her artwork is rich in bright colors, and captures the warmth of the Gulf Coast.

“I have never worked as an artist,” she said. “It’s not what I do, it’s what I am.”

Cyndi has been a featured artist at ArtsQuest, the Destin Seafood Festival, the Destin Festival of Arts, and was a featured artist for Art on the Harbor in Destin. She accepts commission pieces, and also does portraits and architectural renderings.

Find Cyndi at her shop at 26 Logan Lane Unit A in Shops of Grayton, or call (850) 363-8028, or e-mail cyndieart@aol.com. To see more of her artwork, visit Cyndi’s gallery online at cyndieastburnart.com.