About Mary Ahern
I make art because the garden taught me how to find my center.
For more than three decades I have designed and tended the garden around my home and studio. When life gets loud, that is where I go. I walk among the plants, look closely at a single flower, and slowly come back to balance. Everything I make grows out of that moment.
The garden has taught me about the quest for survival, the inevitable decay, and the promise of rebirth. I see our own lives in those cycles.
That is why I return again and again to the circle. I have collected round things for most of my life, and circles and spheres have moved through my paintings, sculpture, assemblage, and garden for over fifty years. To me the circle stands for life and birth, for woman and nurturing, and for the circle of life itself. When I paint the center of a flower, I am painting all of that.
My studio is wherever I am creating: standing at my easel, sitting at my computer, or bending in my garden. I use whatever tools a piece asks for, paint or pixels, sound or soil. If my garden has taught me anything, it’s that nothing stays one thing for very long. Neither do I.
I don’t offer answers so much as an invitation to slow down, to look closely, and to notice your own cycles of dormancy and bloom. Explore the work, read about my process, and take a quiet moment with the flowers I’ve gathered over a lifetime of tending garden, canvas, and screen. .…mary
Galleries and Organizations that feature my work:
Ceres Gallery: I am represented by Ceres Gallery, a landmark feminist art institution founded in 1984 and located in Chelsea’s premier gallery district at 547 West 27th Street, New York City. Dedicated to elevating women artists for over four decades, Ceres is one of the most respected alternative exhibition spaces in the New York art world.
Artsy: My work is also featured on Artsy, the world’s leading online art marketplace, where over 3 million collectors and enthusiasts from 190+ countries discover and acquire art. Artsy connects the most respected galleries, auction houses, and artists globally, making it one of the most prestigious and far-reaching platforms in the contemporary art world.
Bloomberg Connects: My work is also featured on Bloomberg Connects, a free app offering access to exhibitions and artists at over 1,500 museums and cultural organizations worldwide. View my Artist listing on Bloomberg Connects
Writing is a big part of my creative output.
My short, medium, and longer articles are published on a variety of different platforms.
Studio Glimpses: A daily journal following the life of a working artist, the creative breakthroughs, the obstacles, the flights of fancy, and the quiet, unglamorous hours that all go into making art. Photos and reflections document each day in the studio, offering an honest, unfiltered look at art in progress.
Naturally Inspired: A bi-weekly Substack column exploring the deep connections between the natural world, the garden, and the creative life. Each essay weaves together observations from life, influences, inspiration, and creativity, which continually feed and shape artistic vision.
Sanctuary Magazine: A column for longer, more contemplative essays that explore the intersections of art, identity, and the creative journey. These pieces take a wider view, examining what it means to live as an artist and how the practices of painting, gardening, and writing inform and sustain one another.
Learn more about my artistic philosophy in my Artist’s Statement below.
Click here to read my full Biography or
Click here for my Artist Resume
Artist Statement
My work returns again and again to centering, not as an escape from chaos, but as an active response to it. That practice began in my garden, where looking closely at a single flower brings me back to balance.
I pair the very small with the very large, the center of a bloom with the shape of a galaxy, because I believe the same patterns repeat at every scale. In my paintings, flowers are glazed in transparent layers over abstract underpaintings inspired by deep space, each layer distinct, yet inseparable from what surrounds it.
I move fluidly between painting, digital imagery, video, sound, and installation, choosing whatever each idea calls for. Neuroaesthetics, the study of how art and beauty affect the brain and body, has given me language for what I sensed all along: slowing down to look closely can restore our balance. That is what I want my work to offer, a place to pause, look, and find center again.
Click here for my full Artist’s Statement.