Oh buoy!
International teacher Michelle Held leads local artists through three-day workshop in Ocala.
Artist Michelle Held paints her “Three Of A Kind” oil on canvas painting as she teaches an oil painting workshop at the Braised Onion on Northeast 25th Avenue in Ocala, Fla. on Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026. [Bruce Ackerman/Ocala Gazette] 2026.
The beauty of art is that there is no wrong way to do it. But sometimes even the most gifted artists can use a little guidance.
When artist Julie Shealy of Gallery B in Ocala met internationally acclaimed artist and teacher Michelle Held, it was a match made in heaven. Now, Shealy considers Held her mentor and “best friend.”
Shealy teaches twice weekly classes at Gallery B and recently hosted Held, who lives in Sarasota, for a three-day workshop in Ocala so her students could learn from the master.
“Michelle is a very famous international artist. These are all the artists I have from Gallery B and most of them have been painting with me for five or six years,” Shealy noted, sweeping her hand around the banquet room at the Braised Onion restaurant, where colorful canvases dominated the scene.
Seated at long tables filled with small easels, racks of paintbrushes, lamps and bright blobs of oil paints were art students Marilyn Peek, Karen Buss, Linda Shelnut, Penny Villea, Cindy Gude, Elaine Tucci, Ditsy Flynn, Lola Campbell, Jackie Keesee, Lynn Nobles, Susan Wilson, Cindy Schmidt, Anna Williams, Pam Duke, Laurie Cope and Leesa Rigby. They wore protective aprons and the floors were covered with cloths to catch errant bits of paint.
The room buzzed with conversation as Held held sway in front of a display of some of her finished works, along with the canvas she was painting with the class, and as Shealy moved among the students offering support.
“She’s a fine artist, but impressionistic, so we’re painting buoys today and then we’ll be painting turtles. We paint in oil and it’s a wonderful medium,” Shealy said. “Michelle leaves here and goes to Atlanta. She does plein air (painting outdoors) and is an award-winning artist. She’s a faculty member on Plein Air South (a five-day regional gathering in Apalachicola in March) and we are just very lucky to have her here.”
Shealy said the two of them met at a plein air event in Winter Park about six years ago.
“We just connected. I love her style of painting, and we have a lot in common. She’s definitely somebody I have learned from, and she’s taken me under her wing. I’m learning gouache from her, which is another medium, and now I’m teaching my students. In February, we’ll be going to Silver Springs State Park and Tuscawilla Park and doing gouache out there and it’s all because of her,” Shealy added.
“Some people love Mahjong, some people play bridge, but this is our fun hobby and we love it,” she added.
If you visit Held’s website, it will take you a few minutes to scroll through the numerous shows, paint outs and invitationals she has participated in — and the awards she won. Her works are currently in galleries in Longwood, Tavernier Key and Sarasota in Florida, and in Beaufort, South Carolina.
“I have been doing this for 36 years, painting. But with COVID-19 in 2020, I had to figure out how to make a living as an artist, so I went online and started teaching. This is my sixth year of teaching and now I travel internationally and teach. This year I’ll go to Ireland, Italy and Spain,” she explained.
Held teaches in Ocala every January and said, “Some of these students have taken several workshops with me, some are brand new, so we have all different levels. They feel like family, and it’s the one workshop, because of Julie and the ladies, that I will always say yes to.”
Held said that with the buoy paintings, she was teaching “light and shadow and form.”
“Most people would just paint a flat buoy, but these guys make it jump off the page. I teach a lot of things, but form is probably the number one thing,” Held noted.
Marilyn Peek is an avid fan of both Shealy and Held and was one of a handful of Ocala students who traveled to Held’s workshop in Cortona, Italy, last year.
“It’s where ‘Under the Tuscan Sun’ was filmed, and that’s where we had a farmhouse. How cool is that?” Peek said with a big smile as she pulled out a hardcover book that documents the experience. “It was so much fun. She makes it fun.”
Peek said she had done some painting in college and took it up again after the three children she had with her late husband, Albert Peek, were grown up. Albert, who founded a local appraisal company, real estate brokerage firm and several investment companies, and was a co-founder of the Country Club of Ocala, passed away in October of 2023. Marilyn said when he was ill, they would often visit the Braised Onion restaurant for meals and the “people here became like family to me.”
“So, when we were looking at where to have this workshop, I asked them if we could come here and they said, ‘absolutely,’” she shared.
“We love Marilyn,” said Michael Baker, the event organizer for the venue, which is managed by his son, Trevor Baker.
“We love to help the community out, so whenever we can accommodate groups, we don’t charge for the room or anything like that. We like to take care of our local businesses. I do a lot of business events, seminars, celebrations of life, anniversaries. If it’s local, we’ll take care of it,” Michael Baker said.
As the painting class progressed, Held walked around the room to take a look at some of the students’ work. Then she went to her own canvas and picked up a paintbrush and a palette knife.
“What if I take this one and pull this up a little bit so that just makes it a little more sparkly and fun for me — for me — you don’t have to do it,” she said while making a bold move with the palette knife.
“I don’t want you guys to go crazy, because there will be crying, but maybe I just make a little mark here. Maybe I put a little green, a little reflective — that’s fun what I just did there,” she said with a big laugh. “It breaks up the monotony of I have a buoy, a buoy and a buoy — now I have your eye dancing everywhere.”
To learn more, go to artbymichelleheld.com and julieshealy.com
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