An Inspired Artist

Local painter Margaret Watts’ larger-than-life gallery—68 pieces in all—surely must inspire the congregants of the equally larger-than-life Queen of Peace Catholic Church on SR 200 on a typical Sunday. But her paintings are also remarkable for their timeless stories from the Bible and for the memories they evoke from the artist who created such lovely works.

By Claudia O'Brien • Photos by Steve Floethe

For decades, professional fine artist Margaret Watts has delighted people near and far with her memorable art. Some of our readers may even be fortunate enough to have one or more of the Ocala painter’s works hanging on their walls.

Margaret is perhaps best known locally for her realistic oil and pastel landscape paintings. Many of her works, inspired by places in and around Ocala and Marion County, offer a strong sense of place and an aura of serenity in our often too-hurried world. Readers may also have seen her lovely drawn and painted renditions of local past and current historic structures made into popular notecards and used in books on the history of Marion County.

There is, however, one aspect of Margaret’s art that many of her fans may not know about. It’s the magnificent collection of her Bible-inspired paintings that hangs on the walls of Queen of Peace Catholic Church on SR 200.

"The Resurrection"

Twenty-five years ago, Father Patrick J. O’Doherty, pastor at Queen of Peace, asked fine artist and professor John Briggs at the then-called Central Florida Community College for the name of the area’s finest portrait painter. Without any hesitation, John Briggs replied, “Margaret Watts,” and gave him her contact number.

Father O’Doherty soon called Margaret, told her of John Briggs’ recommendation, and asked if she would be available to create fine artworks for the church. Although Queen of Peace is not her parish church—she is a longtime member at Blessed Trinity—she accepted his invitation with enthusiasm.

Today, 68 pieces of her remarkable sacred art hang on the church’s walls. Many of them feature people who are members of the congregation and others Margaret knows personally. Some are the friends and relatives of those friends.

Margaret’s late husband Bernard is pictured in “The Pentecost” image. (He is the man kneeling beside Mary.) And Father O’Doherty’s late mother is one of the three women in the background of “The Resurrection” painting.

Last year, we attended a community program on Margaret’s church art presented by the Visual Artists Society from the College of Central Florida. It took place inside the church where Margaret was able to take the attendees right to her paintings and tell them fascinating—and often humorous—stories about their creation and about the real-life people in the scenes.

Some of the artwork that’s hung high on the towering walls of the sanctuary required Margaret to paint atop an electric lift set up in the church. On her first experience with it, she ascended on the contraption with lots of help by church workmen who explained the lift mechanism and how to descend when she was ready to come back down.

"Mary, The New Eve"

By the time she was ready to descend, however, Margaret says she couldn’t figure out which button to push. By then, the workmen were long gone. Fortunately, there was a woman sitting in a pew below.

Imagine that woman’s surprise when she heard Margaret call out for help from above. She asked her to please go to the church office and tell someone there, “Margaret needs to come down.” She laughs as she explains the ordeal, adding that by the time someone arrived a short time later to help her descend, she had figured it out for herself.

And then there was the time she noticed a small neat pile of snakeskin that had been shed by a visiting reptile on the floor next to where she was working on a large painting atop scaffolding in the church’s maintenance building. However, no one could tell her where the snake itself was located. “That,” Margaret remembers, “didn’t give me any peace of mind.”

In the church narthex hangs a very large oil painting entitled, “The Resurrection.” It was the very first painting Margaret created for the church in 1994. It is also the largest painting she has done for Queen of Peace, measuring 17 feet in height and 11.5 feet in width. The painting was created entirely off-site at the Colonial Paper Company in northeast Ocala and was carefully transported to the church where a team of workmen positioned and hung the massive work. Margaret says she watched every minute of the operation and, appropriately enough, prayed that everything would go smoothly.

The young soldier that’s shown in different poses in this painting was a young CF student whom a friend had recommended because she felt he would be a perfect model. When he accepted the invitation to participate, Margaret had him fitted for his uniform at the Ocala Civic Theatre and arranged to pose and photograph him against an outside marble wall at the Appleton Museum next door. She wanted to capture the look she had in mind of him against marble so she could paint his likeness into the portrait from those photographs.

Every painting seems to hold two stories—the intended biblical one and the real-life tale of the people in immortalized on the canvas.

On either side of the main altar in the church hang two large paintings: “The Pentecost” and “Mary, The New Eve.” The woman who posed as Mary for the latter portrait is the daughter of a friend of Margaret’s. Baby Jesus is the daughter’s baby. There’s even a personal connection with the dove. One of Margaret’s sons, James, enjoys amateur photography and she asked if he had photographs of doves he could send her to paint from. Another of the dove pictures he sent was used in another painting.

"The Pentecost"

In “The Pentecost” painting, the model for Mary is the mother of the woman who posed in the “Mary, The New Eve” painting. Lastly, Margaret’s late husband Bernard is the man kneeling closest to Mary in “The Pentecost” painting.

Father O’Doherty says that not only are Margaret’s works true to the highest artistic standards, she has been able to leave her own personality and idiosyncracies out of the paintings. “She tells the stories without adding any personal comments,” he explains.

Father O’Doherty feels that the church’s diverse collection of art telling the story of the congregation’s faith is now complete. Altogether, the pieces depict stories from both Judaism and Christianity, including the Old and New Testaments from “Genesis” to “The Apocalypse.”

In November 2017, Margaret had a frightening health scare. Alone at home, she collapsed after experiencing a pulmonary embolism. She was unable to summon help, but miraculously two friends from her church just happened to stop by for an unexpected visit and found her. Margaret calls that “a miracle” and says that the excellent care she received in the ambulance, at the hospital, and at the rehabilitation center has helped enable her to make a remarkable recovery.

Now 86, Margaret says the one concession she’s making these days is to not go up on scaffolding anymore.

“One of my neighbors even confiscated my little five-foot ladder to make sure I couldn’t use it,” she complains with a smile. “However,” she adds. “I have no plans to stop painting.”

"The Nativity"

Margaret Watts