My Art is inspired by the gardens surrounding my studio. There is a complexity to my work in both the spiritual and technical parts of my mind. Enjoy this meandering journey with me. The highs, the lows, inspiration, ideas, techniques and general musings about the complicated creative life of an Artist.
A Love of Reading from the Start
Mary Swart Reading The Poky Little Puppy (1953)
I’m in my 70s and very excited since I’m back at school and taking a new class. We are so lucky now that there are many ways to continue learning. We can take classes in traditional in-person settings, take online workshops, or pursue a hybrid balance. What a gift!
My pursuit of knowledge has always been eclectic. I study what I want, when I want or need it, to enhance the projects I’m working on. Not one to seek the traditional BA, MA, or PhD stepping stones, I followed the song made famous by Frank Sinatra, I did it “My Way.”
One of the constants in my life is that I’m always studying something. A deep and wide curiosity leads me to focus on personal growth and practical knowledge — from Maharishi to computer programming and everything in between.
Mary Swart, McKinley Junior High School, 1962. Front row 5th from left.
Starting college when my youngest entered pre-school gave me a late start to higher education. Once I entered the college classrooms, I experienced a surge of intensity for learning that has never diminished. In those earlier years, my studies were in traditional settings filled with students far younger than I was. It was fun to ruin the curve.
Online classes, initially offered by Lynda.com (now LinkedIn Learning), are how I studied in the mid-1990s as I balanced a full-time career while single-handedly raising my sons. These courses are brilliant orchestrations of various learning styles. This online coursework, consisting of 2-4 minute videos and written transcripts, runs the gamut of creative design, business, technology, and beyond. The subject offerings are now vastly more than in my original traditional classroom college settings.
On-site courses offer many benefits that I would not have benefited from in online settings. For two years, in the early 2000s, I drove over an hour each way (not counting the traffic delays) to study botanical illustration at the New York Botanical Garden (NYBG). Here, I studied botany with a microscope, pencils, and paint. Renowned artists flew in from around the world to teach Master class intensives. And they were intense! Being shoulder-to-shoulder with those artists was a stimulating challenge I wouldn’t have experienced watching them on a screen.
Many online classes over the years have allowed me to study subjects like digital painting, oils, watercolor, illustration, and abstraction. These online classes let me experiment quickly with various mediums and styles to see if they are something I might want to study more deeply. I remember taking an online workshop with an artist and then flying from NY to Baton Rouge to study in his in-person workshops. This would never have happened had I not met him and his work online. Both the online and in-person types of study are unique experiences in their way, and at times, one leads to the other.
Screenshot of one of the online Seth Godin & Bernadette Jiwa Akimbo courses I took with other students around the world.
It’s a great way to meet others who are interested in the same things as you.
Hybrid coursework is how I studied for years with the Art Business Coach Alyson Stanfield. Through her online workshops, personal online coaching sessions, and in-person Master Mind Workshops hosted around the US, I honed my skills in presenting and discussing my work. An outgrowth of this program was founding an online community of like-minded peers engaged with the same program and forming a monthly online meeting to discuss and support our ongoing work as we all continued to evolve.
When Covid hit, I was already comfortable with many new learning opportunities. Collaborative and community-driven discussions were the style of the workshops I took with Seth Godin on the Discourse platform. He introduced topics through recorded videos and posted questions. We posted our responses on the community boards, where we tagged each other, commented, asked questions, presented suggestions, and mentioned difficulties or successes we were encountering in our work. I have studied storytelling, creativity, and marketing geared toward non-profits in these collaborative learning environments.
Could I have learned subjects independently without taking some of these courses since I already have so much experience? Sure I could! However, the diverse types of structured learning experiences and interactions with fellow learners have been invaluable. The learning opportunities are endless, whether through traditional classrooms, online courses, or a blend of both.
Continuing to learn, grow, be open to new ideas, and study subjects I’m interested in changes me. It makes me more interesting. I have topics to talk with others about. Suggestions to make. Ideas to offer. It keeps me in the game. I’m taking Seth Godin’s online course on Udemy, “This is Strategy.” I guess life-long learning is my Strategy.
Originally published in Sanctuary Magazine.
My garden has been the inspiration behind my art for decades but formally studying horticulture introduced me to an entirely new understanding of the garden. Studying the science behind this living environment at my doorstep, was and continues to be a source of endless investigation. Not just in the beauty a garden can project, but in the sustainability, the interaction, and reliability of the vast array of life forms involved in creating a mutually dependent whole. Because of this deep study of my garden, my art has changed. As I’ve grown in an awareness of the complexity of the garden that I’ve designed and tended for over 35 years, my art has changed too by becoming more expressive, less realistic, and more multilayered.
I first became aware of how I was being transformed, not just by having more technical knowledge through my studies in horticulture when one day, standing in my garden, my clothes and hands covered in dirt, scratched and bug bitten, a wave of quiet contentment entered my very being. Yes, I was exhausted, and my body was aching from the hours of hard physical labor, but something different was flowing through my mind. It was a sense of awakening. I felt it but I was not able to articulate clearly what I felt. I still don’t have the words completely to express this transformation. So, I have been trying to do so through my art.
Working in my studio on the Phaelanopsis Orchid (December 2020)
Spending years since then of work both in my mind and physically, I have dug deeper into the metaphor the garden has represented to me about all living beings. It has taught me that in order to survive, the building of communities is needed to create a harmonic, healthy balance. The garden speaks to me of survival. I watch hummingbirds, with their long beaks, attracted to the long tubular flowers of the Salvias. I smell the late day fragrance of the Brugmansia as it seduces night pollinators less exhausted from a day’s work to help the lifecycle. Each insect, each flower, each fungus is only trying to survive for another season, another year, another generation. We as humans, like the complexities found in the garden are also trying to survive and hopefully prosper.
In my studio, my large, centrally focused flower paintings have been inspired by the imagery I saw through the microscopes used during my scientific studies in horticulture. The bold colors and large sized paintings were my way of grabbing the attention of the viewer just as the stunning presentation of a bold peony blossom calls out for attention.
Phaelanopsis Orchid (A Work in Progress, December 2020)
© Mary Ahern
Over time the education I am receiving from the garden has been changing me. My artwork Is reflecting my deepening thoughts, abstract concepts, and my openness to explore new ideas and deeper theories of the world surrounding us.
During Covid, another revelation presented itself to me. I began to look at the imagery posted online by NASA showing us the galaxy of which we are but a small part. I realized that the entire universe also depended upon that harmony and balance all of us, the garden included, must have in order to exist. This awareness of the delicacy of both the microcosm and the macrocosm of our worlds is what I am now trying to express in my artwork. Blending abstractions inspired by the cosmos transparently through the realistic flowers grown in my garden informs the current work in my studio.
The awareness of the multi-layered reliance on other forces to help in survival is humbling. This new awareness has deepened my gratitude. This is what I am now attempting to create in my studio.
Cosmic Phaelanopsis
Oil ~ 24 x 24 inches. Deep Cradled Hardboard. Available on the website here.
© Mary Ahern
Note: “Cosmic Phaelanopsis” is the final work after I put the piece aside for two years due to being dissatisfied with its direction. The final “Cosmic Phaelanopsis” is an example of the new direction my work has taken.
Partial Artist Statement:
This artwork sparks a vital conversation reflecting the interconnectedness and balance within the microcosm of my garden and the macrocosm of the cosmos. My work draws inspiration from the life cycle of flowers to explore existential questions about existence, purpose, fragility, and interconnectedness.
There were women who stepped into my life’s journey that changed the course of my life at critical junctures that I only realized in hindsight. I was raised in a very conventional household by strict European parents with very defined roles. By twenty years of age, I’d come to the pinnacle of my success with my prince charming of a hubby, a baby, and our own home. What a relief! I had it all. The American dream. Contentment personified.
Mary (L) and Roberta ~ 1977 Photo Courtesy: Mary Ahern
Until my beloved hubby rocked our little world by wanting out of our paradise. I had no life preparation beyond anything except the happy home, two sons, a dog, and a white picket fence. I didn’t know any woman who worked, let alone was raising their children by herself. I honestly imagined my sons, and I would starve to death without a man to work and earn the money to use in the supermarket. The windows in our home became a prison to me, keeping us silently and painfully apart from the world. My dark hopelessness led me on frightening trails of despair and death.
The emergency slowly passed. Life settled down a bit. But I was changed forever. I knew I needed to control the outcome of life for my sons and me. Then, I met Roberta at the YMCA Swim and Gym classes for our three-year-olds. She was a biology professor at Queen College and showed me I could get educated. Because of her, I went to college, got my degree in fine arts, and then got my divorce on my terms.
With confidence and a goal, I got a job at Barnard College, the women’s college of Columbia University, a bastion of feminism—an entirely new world of supportive women who opened up a vast world for me. Martha hired me as the office manager since, as she said, any single mother knows how to balance time and tasks. Since classes were free for employees, I studied programming in the School of Engineering, and Martha encouraged me to get into the then nascent field of computers. She also said to follow where a company makes its money, so I should go into sales or finance for my career. I took her advice.
Mary’s Office Just After Starting Her Own Business, Online Design (1995)
Photo Courtesy: Mary Ahern
Mary Ann had a Datsun 280 sports car, wore gold jewelry, and owned expensive houses. She showed me women on their own can be wealthy. I determined that if I couldn’t be home at 3 o’clock with the milk and cookies, I would make the most money I possibly could. She showed me it was possible.
I went into the sales field in the male-dominated computer graphics industry since there I would earn money based upon my own efforts while combining my art, graphics, and computer backgrounds. And I did. Until I hit my head on the glass ceiling. So, I started my own graphic design/marketing business.
As an entrepreneur, I controlled how I used my time, benefited financially from my own skills and efforts, chose the types of work that intrigued me and created and designed my own lifestyle.
And now is my time in my journey; I get to pay it forward. Using the models, the women before so wisely gave me, I am able to generously offer my experience to other women. Being an active member of the National Association of Women Artists (NAWA), I am in a position to share my business experience in sales and marketing with many other women to help them move along in their own journeys. Like having a delicious piece of apple pie with a scoop of ice cream and a cherry on top at the end of an exquisite meal, I’m finally having my dessert.
NAWA has been empowering women artists for 135 years as the first women’s professional art organization founded in the US. Like the women who helped me in my life’s journey, I’m comforted by knowing I’m also helping other women in theirs. As Isaac Newton said: “…if I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.”
My life is filled with gratitude for what I have experienced and learned throughout my life, and that I now have an opportunity to share with other women in my community of professional women artists. Life is sweet!
National Association of Women Artists (NAWA) 2023 New Member Induction Ceremony
Mary (Bottom Row, 4th from Right)
Photo Courtesy: Mary Ahern. Chair of Public Relations Committee
Originally published in Sanctuary Magazine March 2024
Photo of Judy Chicago by Donald Woodman
A short while ago I had a virtual visitor enter my studio while I was standing at my easel working on an oil painting. The visitor was Judy Chicago who was interviewed for the 60-year retrospective of her work at the New Museum in New York. Out of the corner of my eye, as I continued to paint, I watched and listened to the live-streaming event for the exhibition “Herstory” (here’s the YouTube Video of the event) which was the first comprehensive museum survey of her work. Judy Chicago was born in 1939 and as I listened to this interview it was 2023. Eighty-four years is a long, long time to wait to have this type of recognition.
This juxtaposition of Judy being live-streamed into my studio as I painted was profound for me since Judy’s work and those of many other women artists whom I was fortunate enough to be made aware of during the 1970’s when I was majoring in art in college, are why I’m still creating my work. These women artists weren’t in my textbooks. They were instead presented to me by some of the women art historians and women professors I studied with when I was lucky enough to attend classes at the then, tuition-free, City University of NY. All these women changed my life. The women artists were showing a new way of working and the professors were exposing us to a reevaluation of the art historical canon.
I first saw Judy’s work in 1979 as thousands of us made a pilgrimage to the Brooklyn Museum of Art to view The Dinner Party. This groundbreaking installation was created with Judy’s vision and also the efforts of hundreds of women offering their skills in various mediums. This work helped to introduce fabrics, embroidery, stitching, ceramics and various other techniques which had been ungraciously removed from the category of “Fine Art” by those who were in charge of writing the history of art. These creative skills were those exercised primarily by women and now were finally being presented in museums.
We stood for what seemed like hours, quietly waiting for our turn to enter the site-specific art in the room which housed the installation. Most of us on the long line had dressed in better than everyday wear for the occasion. When we finally reached the doorway, we found the room lights were dimmed. We entered as if entering a house of worship. Voices were hushed. Many folded their hands as if in prayer. It was the closest I’d come to a sacred event outside of an actual house of worship. We all knew this was a pivotal point in our lives. Our eyes and minds were to be opened to entirely new languages, visuals and histories that we’d never encountered before in the mainstream art world. Upon emerging from this immersive experience, we were elated, buoyant, excited beyond imagination by the possibilities we’d just been introduced to. We were sure that now everything would be different. We knew it had to be.
Upon reading Judy’s recent book, The Flowering: The Autobiography of Judy Chicago”, I learned how hard a life she had bringing her visions to fruition and acceptance. She and her work were torn apart, reviled, and denigrated by the conventional art world. The press denounced her vision and the work of the women artists who contributed their skills. Reading about her hard-fought lifetime of bringing her art into the world, reminded me that all of us have obstacles in our lives. They vary from person to person. But to be a creative artist for an entire lifetime takes a certain amount of grit. Success, by whatever measurement we use, takes the ability to keep pushing forward through the hard times. The times your heart is breaking. The times you are having trouble putting food on the table. The times your family is in crisis. The times you feel less than because others feel so much more than.
Because of these feminist artist pioneers, I’m still painting, still creating, still growing. They cleared the path and showed me the way. And as I stood at my easel painting, Judy streamed in to tell me to keep going, there’s no quitting, there’s no calendar, there’s no promise, no destination. I’ll just keep making my art. She still is.
Photo collage by Mary Ahern
At the age of 14, I was alone and lying in the summer grass on a hill in Brooklyn, New York, staring upward through the leaves at the passing clouds while trying to understand why a person I loved dearly had suddenly died. Without an anchor or language to explain the passage, I was at a profound loss and searching for an answer, an explanation. I clearly remember feeling the warm energy from the ground swell up and pass through my body and like a mist, mingle into the leaves and up into the clouds in that deeply blue sky.
At that moment, I recognized that I, as a person, was another aspect of nature, joined with the wind, the air, the plants, the trees, and all life teeming around me – just another form of energy. This gift has been with me throughout my life and is what I gather in my garden and express in my art.
1985 – Mary Ahern in the Cablevision studio working with the Chameleon electronic paint system.
Painting in my studio. The white iris blooms in my garden each spring. I glaze with thin washes using a fan brush and thinned paints.
My Zig-Zag Journey
Like most of us, our life journey takes many paths. For me, my twists and turns led me to a career that blended my fine arts training with my technical background. As a single parent with two hungry sons, I found a way to keep one foot in the arts by selling computer graphics equipment into the broadcast television industry. Creating graphics and fine art using the computer as my medium enabled me to have the financial stability I needed to live the life I envisioned for myself and my family.
Learning is a lifetime passion for me. Within the classroom, I have formal degrees and certifications in fine art, horticulture, botanical illustration, logic and computer programming. To this day, I continue to take online and offline workshops in marketing, writing, and various artistic mediums and genres.
Throughout my work career, I always maintained my studio art practice since it is the root of all that I do and who I am as a human being. At the present time, I have the good fortune of continuing to work independently without needing clients, creating my artwork, showing it extensively in exhibitions, and lecturing on art.
Entrance to my woodland garden. Throughout my garden there are round things to be walked through, around and over.
I am not just an artist. I am a horticulturist on a mission to transform my surroundings. I created an artistic landscape around my home as a place to immerse myself – not simply a garden to be admired while sitting on the deck. Initially, I did not have a specific plan. Instead, I let the woodland speak to me. These woodland paths have gifted me with decades of intimate and satisfying connections with nature. I immerse myself in the changing light, the turning of the seasons, the gifts of growth, and the sadness of loss as the garden goes through its life cycles. This connection with nature has inspired my mind and my art for decades.
Creating my garden has many components, as does creating my art on canvas in my studio. The mediums change, but the design concepts are consistent. Through the creation of my garden and my paintings, I take into consideration traditional artistic issues such as focal points, perspective, repetition, rhythm, texture and scale. In designing my garden, however, which I consider a three-dimensional assemblage of objects, I also add the variables of time, season, vulnerability, happenstance and science to the creative process.
I have been designing and working in the woodland garden over the course of 30 years. It’s a place of journey and meditation. I’ve been collecting round things most of my life. They feature heavily in much of my art and garden designs.
Click here to see more of my oil paintings
Some of my Audrey Flack books.
Audrey Flack is a painter who, when I was in college in the 1970s, inspired me as I began my artistic journey. My art history teacher Patricia Hills at York College, which is part of the City University of New York (CUNY) system, introduced us to the many women artists who were pushing the envelope at the time. There was Audrey Flack, Joyce Kozloff and Judy Chicago. All of these women are currently Honorary Vice Presidents of the National Association of Women Artists. Since at the moment, I am Chair of the Public Relations Committee of NAWA it is such an honor to be meeting these artists who are still teaching us to keep working, keep pushing, and keep making our own artistic statements.
Recently I went with hubby Dave and my friends Susan Rostan & hubby Bob to the “Heroines of Abstract Expressionism” at the Southampton Arts Center here on Long Island. Audrey had work in the show but so did three other artists who had been members of NAWA, Nell Blaine, Dorothy Dehner, and Buffie Johnson.
Roz Dimon, Audrey Flack, Mary Ahern, Susan Rostan at the Southampton Arts Center, November 2023 Photo credit: James F Dawson
Since Susan and I are co-hosting the Historical Research Team at NAWA this was an auspicious occasion for us and opened up new opportunities for research and writing.
Then another amazing event happened, Audrey Flack was scheduled for a talk at Southampton two weeks later, so we signed up and took another drive out east. It sure was worth it! Audrey, who is now 92, was there and clear as a bell answered questions about her work and her experiences from the 1950s onward. She was funny, dished gossip, was fully knowledgeable about the era, the people, the art movements and who the players in the industry were at the time. She talked about the Cedar Bar where all the artists gathered, talked & drank after working in their studios all day. She talked about Jackson Pollack, Robert Motherwell, Clement Greenberg, Helen Frankenthaler, and many more artists and gallerists. In the audience, was a who’s who of the Hamptons Art Scene asking the questions and/or thanking her for her many contributions to the arts.
Audrey Flack at the Southampton Arts Center, November 2023 Photo credit: James F Dawson
I’m so grateful to still be able to be working as an artist, that I continue to grow, to enjoy and learn from other artists. To have this “brush with greatness” that I experienced by listening to, speaking to and having my photo taken with one of my own personal heroes sparkles brightly in my life’s journey. I thank Pat Hills for opening my eyes and my mind over 50 years ago to pay attention to these women artists who were clearing the path and showing us that we as women artists had voices and something unique to say. And after all these decades, we still have statements to make, wisdom to share, and paths to plow for others to follow.
In 1973, fifty years ago I began my artist’s journey. Since I’d majored in music during my Junior and Senior High School days, playing the trumpet and conducting, I hadn’t taken any art classes. It wasn’t until my youngest son went to pre-school that I began stretching my wings.
My first step towards discovering that my life’s work would be an artistic journey was buying a Jon Gnagy, Learn to Draw set and experiencing a sensation that the charcoal was an extension of my hand, my arm and my body. It was thrilling!
After completing his entire set of drawing lessons, I decided to take painting classes at the local YMCA where I lived at the time in Queens, NY. So, I arranged for a babysitter, signed up for the oil painting class and made my first foray into Jerry’s Artarama art supply store with my supply shopping list in hand. How electrifying to be exposed to so many wonderful and exciting new products, widgets, thingies, colors, brushes, papers and canvas. Oh, the possibilities!
Still Life with Peaches, my second oil painting which was completed in 1973
Along with the small tubes of Grumbachers, some brushes, canvas boards and mediums, we were instructed to bring some pictures from calendars or notecards that we could use to copy. My first calendar photo was of a brilliant orange sunset with the silhouette of a house at the bottom. I still have these early paintings, some on walls, some tucked away.
The second oil painting I ever did I copied from a placemat that I had borrowed from a neighbor.
I so loved the image, not knowing at the time that it was representative of the golden age of Dutch still life painting from the 1600s. I had no formal knowledge of art history but, being Dutch, and having spent time in Holland as a child I had been exposed to the art hanging in the homes of my extended family. That still-life image spoke to me in a way I didn’t understand at the time. It spoke to me of family, of my history, of roots, of connection. It is also part of my art journey, not just another painting but the beginning of a 50-year adventure with all the ups and downs, zigs and zags. An adventure that, I’m happy to say is still unfolding!
This is my studio wall from some years ago with artwork covering a piece from many decades. Some are now in storage, some have moved to different walls. All of them speak to me of my life and artistic journey of these exciting 50 years of creativity.
One of my studio walls in 2019 with work from before college, during college and after college. Various mediums from oils to pastels to needlework to watercolor.
So I’m standing in my studio basking in the golden warmth of just having completed my one month Solo Exhibition which filled three rooms in an historic mansion at the Bayard Cutting Arboretum. I’d worked for years creating new work for this prestigious opportunity. And now the show was over, the work still owned by me was taken down from the walls, packaged protectively and transported to my home studio. I looked around me surrounded by all this new artwork. I remembered the journey of discovery as so many new ideas had begun to seep into my new work over time.
As I stood there looking around me with contentment at these 40 new artworks, a cold wave of concern trickled into my mind. Where would I put all my art? I’m a minimalist by nature. I can’t stand clutter and now every surface in my two-room studio is covered with piles of work. Canvases are stacked, leaning against the walls. All the walls in my studio and home are already full. A sense of claustrophobia was rapidly taking hold. The warm glow I’d been feeling turned a cold blue.
I needed to immediately take action. I pulled down the ceiling ladder to the attic and climbed up to the sweltering space. There was artwork from my college days still stored up there as a reminder of this long road of creativity. But it occurred to me that now my work was bigger, heavier & how would I easily and safely get it up and down that ladder for upcoming exhibitions? As the years progress that solution would be even less and less optimal. And then I remembered the squirrels. The ones we’d battled to evict from the attic. In my mind, I crossed this idea off the list of possibilities.
Next, I went to the garage. The one filled with bicycles, a power washer, a lawnmower, a snowblower and racks and racks filled with gardening tools and powders & liquids. Again I pulled down the ceiling ladder to enter the garage attic which had even less potential. No lighting, not much height for shelving let alone standing upright. Oh and yes, the mice. The ever present mice who are so resilient, were here when I bought their home in 1989 and they will be here well after I’m gone. I do live in the woods after all and they are survivalists.
Beginning the process of storing my artwork.
Driving to the supermarket that day, out of the corner of my eye I noticed a public storage business that had eluded my conscious vision for years. And now on the day I needed a solution to my problem, my vision became focused. Don’t you love it when these seemingly random events coincide!
I began calculating the size I would need to store my work. At home, I went online and priced a few local businesses which seemed to fill the need and fit the budget. When I drove to the closest storage business to my home/studio to inquire about sizing and see what they had to offer the manager quoted me a price that was $15/month over the online listing. When I mentioned the price difference she said that was normal & I’d be better off ordering it online. Clearly, she wasn’t a commissioned salesperson or owner.
Then she mentioned that the units she had weren’t climate controlled but that another location a little bit further away had units that would fit my needs and were, in fact, climate controlled. She then pulled out her phone & found me a Memorial Day Sale price that was still in effect at the other location & urged me to book it immediately since it was well past that holiday. With a click of my phone, I booked the unit, ensuring the sale price which was half my original estimate, and I felt the weight of the world lift from my shoulders.
Again I felt the warmth of success enter my being. My artwork would be stored with the respect it is due in a climate-controlled critter-free environment. The safety of access to my work as it comes and goes in and out of exhibitions and to new homes is in place. Less clutter in my studio and home provides the space I need and the freedom to continue to create new work and entertain new ideas. Problem solved.
Priceless!
Here I am on a ladder hanging my exhibition
Most people think the amazing artwork you created & have hanging on the walls at your Solo Art Exhibition is where you put all your energy. If you are like most artists who represent themselves as I do, this means that you are the person responsible for creating all the art as well as all the promotion that goes along with a successful outcome of your show.
When I had my third solo exhibition at the Bayard Cutting Arboretum in Great River, Long Island, New York, not being a prolific artist, I worked every day for years to fill three rooms in this historic Manor House with my artwork.
In the exhibition on display were my drawings, colored pencil works, abstract acrylics, painting in oil and mixed media paintings in acrylic and oils. Over 40 original pieces of art which I created in my studio, prepped for hanging, documented on spreadsheets, matted and framed when called for, transported and hung.
Most people think that an artist just creates in their studio but that’s only part of the process if you are a self-representing artist. There is plenty of creativity in marketing as well. Here is some more of the creativity that I put into an art exhibition. Continue reading →
Learning is living and since I’m still alive at 75, I’m still taking classes and workshops. I continue to grow in both technical skills and in mental comprehension constantly. Hubby Dave says that sharks have to keep moving or they die. Guess I’m a shark.
The hunger to learn is something I remember as a kid growing up in a non-intellectual family. Always the odd person out, nose in the book, tackling projects foreign to my foreign born parents. My drive was inexplicable to them and completely normal to me as water is to a fish.
Looking back on just the last few years there’s been an interesting assortment of topics. Two years studying digital painting with an artist in Louisiana which is interesting since I’ve been painting on electronic paint systems since 1986, well before he discovered the medium. But he had a different approach than I did so I learned quite a bit. I also learned more about southern culture during the workshops he held on a southern plantation. Hope he learned to appreciate some of my yankeeness too.
I could have signed it at this stage of the painting, but I knew it wasn’t speaking to me entirely yet. I didn’t work on it anymore for an entire year & then, after taking an abstract realism workshop I knew where it was taking me.
Recently I took an abstract realism workshop with a master painter. I had never done abstraction and but wanted to incorporate another style into my own paintings. For the first time in my long schooling career, which spans decades, I found that I was not doing the exact homework assignments. It felt somewhat naughty, I guess a throwback to childhood.
So much of what he was teaching reawakened in me the knowledge and experience I’d learned over 40 years ago in art school. It reminded me of the many lessons in color, value and saturation. Lessons in composition and layout. All the many lessons in technique. Conversations I’d had with myself but hadn’t heard out loud in too many decades.
Over the years I had a thin but important relationship with the famous artist, Wolf Kahn who passed away in March of 2020, just when the Covid lockdowns began. His wife, the artist Emily Mason whom he was married to for over sixty years, had died three months earlier leaving me with romantic undertones of love and commitment.
When I was studying art at Queens College in the late 1970s, my painting professor Robert Birmelin, invited Wolf Kahn to our painting class as a visiting artist. With an explosive personality quite opposite from each other, Wolf let us up to the roof of the building and gave us a very short blast of time to capture the sunset, perhaps fifteen minutes or so. We then returned to the studio for the intense critiques that followed. Apparently, my sunset painting with quick bold brushstrokes and vivid color moved Kahn enough to use my painting as the model for all the other paintings that he eviscerated. I felt rather proud of myself, to say the least.
Queens Village 1 – 1976 -Oil on Canvas.
I don’t wear red. I don’t even like the color red. It hurts my eyes. And my soul. I don’t even plant red in my garden. There, every flower is either pink or purple or white. Girlie girl. Sweet. Flouncy.
I don’t know why I don’t like red. Perhaps it was my 6th grade teacher who said blonds don’t look good in red. I’m a natural blond BTW. She said her sister wore red and that she died that year, thus scaring all of us little girls who were in her sewing class. Coming to think of it maybe that’s why I don’t sew at all either. (I will add, that was the last year that particular teacher was seen in that school.)
So I was rehanging my studio after having the wall repainted and a hanging system for my art installed when I looked around and saw far too much pink hanging on the walls. Pink peonies, pink roses, pink hibiscus. Way too much pink. Time to do a color I’ve never done before.
One of my accountability buddies had challenged me to do abstracts as a way of loosening up my paintings. Having been a digital artist for decades I’m used to being able to control my images right down to the pixel level. Also, since I studied and worked with Botanical Illustration for years, wearing magnifying lenses over my glasses, I tend to be tight and exacting. Since I normally paint and draw with much detail, she thought that maybe the abstracts would loosen up my style. That 15-minute sketches would encourage more freedom in my surfaces.
A 15-minute sketch of an energetic red dahlia.
Mary Ahern painting the red dahlia in her studio.
The most frequently asked question when I’m discussing my art is: How Long Did It Take You to Paint That? Well, it seems like an easy one to answer doesn’t it? But the problem is, I don’t know what they’re really asking since no matter what I answer they say, “Oh” in response. Here’s why it’s a confusing question.
I don’t know what that person really wants to know. Do they mean how many hours did it take me to paint it? Or how many days? Or weeks? Or months? I’ve tried asking them what their real question is but people don’t really know why they’re asking it. Is it a form of legitimacy? A value judgment on the quality of the work? Perhaps it is a question about fair pricing for the quantity of time allotted to the work.
I wonder if they’re asking me how many hours a day (a week, a month) do I work? Or is it how many hours a day (a week, a month) do I paint, which is different than how much I work at being an artist? I think the life of an artist is a mystery to most people. I think they’re trying to get a handle on what it takes to actually make a work of art.
