Morning Dune

This St. George Island Florida painting captures the quiet stillness of a Gulf Coast morning before the heat settles in. Dean Gioia renders the scene in cool, luminous tones — white sand sweeping across the foreground, sparse clusters of sea oats catching early light, and a pale blue sky stretching wide above the dune line. The composition is spare and unhurried, the way the island itself tends to feel.

Florida’s Forgotten Coast

St. George Island is a 28-mile barrier island separating Apalachicola Bay from the Gulf of Mexico, and it has drawn attention since Spanish explorers first charted its shores in the 1500s. Its geography features glorious sand dunes covered in sea oats — exactly the landscape Gioia documents here. The island remains one of the most undeveloped stretches of Gulf Coast shoreline in Florida, and that untouched quality comes through in every inch of this canvas.

The Work

Gioia works in acrylic on canvas, building the dune’s surface with layered, directional brushwork that suggests wind-sculpted contour without overworking the scene. Shadow and light play across the sand in long, diagonal strokes. The sea oats — painted in warm rust and amber — give the only vertical energy in an otherwise horizontal composition, grounding the piece without pulling focus from the open expanse. This is a St. George Island Florida painting rooted in observation, not idealization.

Ships framed, ready to hang.