For more than 20 years, three women known as the Plein Aire Cottage Artists have wielded paintbrushes against bulldozers in Indian Rocks Beach, a small barrier-island city committed to resisting Florida’s high-rise sprawl. Single-story abodes boasting histories as colorful as their façades have guided the group’s hands and hearts, prompting a mission to save these irreplaceable pieces of the past.
“We didn’t set out to be environmental painters, but [in the early 2000s], a lot of investors were
