Magie Ruley-Island Inspirations

Island Inspirations is Maggie Ruley's studio at 933B Fleming Street in Old Town, and the distinction between studio and gallery matters here. There is no sales staff, no hush, and usually something wet on an easel. Ruley has lived and painted in Key West since the mid-1980s, working mostly in acrylic, with oils and a palette knife when a piece calls for it, and the subjects are the things you walk past all day: conch cottages, palms and foliage, roosters, boats, sunsets and the shoreline. The palette is unapologetic. She spent New Year's Day 2026 at a picnic table near the beach at Fort Zachary Taylor painting an oyster, which tells you most of what you need to know about how she works.

Her route to painting runs through the island's own history. She started in clay, firing pottery at her home on Lower Sugarloaf and becoming known for brightly painted ceramic flip-flops, and from around 1986 she worked out of a corner of Blue Heaven. The clay is behind her now, but four decades of looking at this island is not.

The teaching is a bigger part of the operation than most listings suggest, and it is the reason to look at this record as an activity rather than only a shop. She runs painting classes on Tuesdays, hosts private group painting parties either at the studio or off-site, puts on Paint and Sip events, and teaches online as well for people who want to carry it home. If you want something made rather than taught, she takes commissions, including house portraits and dog portraits, which is a more interesting souvenir of a trip than a print of somewhere you only looked at.

Practically, the studio keeps what she calls ten-ish to five-ish hours most days, so a call ahead is worth it if you are crossing town. Her work has been written up in the Key West Citizen and the New York Daily News, and pieces have gone home with collectors around the country and abroad.