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Category Archives: Being an Artist

Studio Glimpses – The Making of the Pink Peony Painting

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All of my paintings start with the garden, mine or other gardens. On a trip one spring day in May as I wandered around the peony displays at the New York Botanical Garden, with my phone I took snapshots of many of the unbelievable peonies in their collection in full bloom.

Later that year on a cold winter day in December, sifting through my stash of photos, a particular pink peony image jumped out at me and demanded my attention. I knew we could develop a relationship together. It often takes months to complete a painting so I really have to love my subjects in order to spend that much time with them. We need to love each other.

Once deciding on the size of the canvas I want to use I sketch, using vine charcoal, to give the general outline of the final layout onto canvas prepped with multiple layers of gesso. Then I block in the areas of color, working on my lights and darks. Then I paint using many layers of thin glazing in order to get the vibrancy of color I crave.

Oil paints need a few days of drying times between layers and some of my paintings have 15 to 30 layers of glazing. In order to continue painting every day, I usually work on multiple paintings at a time. Each one a different day. A different palette of colors. A different stage of completion. I like the continuous challenge of picking up where I left off. I keep extensive notes at the end of each day for each painting. A sort of diary of each work.

I paint quite slowly and quite neatly. I don’t like to feel sticky so I’m cleaning brushes and washing my hands constantly. Gloves don’t work for me since I don’t like the barrier they put between my brush and my hand. Rolls of paper towels help with the tidiness of my style of workflow. In fact & have two different brands for two different uses.

I listen to music while I paint. During the duration of this particular painting, I was listening to many CDs of van Morrison music. I don’t know why. I just was. Sometimes I’m in a classic rock groove for weeks on end and other times might be jazz, classical or even new wave relaxation. I don’t plan it. It just happens.

I usually paint with just brushes, fan brushes in fact, but the center of this painting demanded a palette knife. It’s not something I usually turn to but since the painting had a mind of its own I complied. Glad I did since the center of this painting is rich with texture while the petals are completely without texture but rich in nuance.

I named this painting Centering – Pink Peony. The reason is that it represents two different views for me. I can see with my eyes that it’s an interpretation of a pink peony but in my soul I found it centered me. Made me contemplate the meaning of this painting, this flower, this world it had lived in and now lives in again but in a different way. One ephemeral, one eternal.

 

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Northport Art in the Park Annual Art Festival Event

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Art in the Park
Art, Music, Poetry and Dance Festival

A July summer event, featuring music, dance, poetry and over 30 artists displaying and selling their original work. Art show begins at 10am and festivities begin at 12pm. Free admission and a fun day for the entire family. Hours are 10am to 5pm.

For Additional information visit the Northport Arts Coalition website

Join us for another exciting event in the picturesque Village of Northport, NY. This multi-disciplinary annual event is held in the Village Park at the foot of main street surrounded by the lush tableau of water, boats, trees, playgrounds and the old time Village feel of another, calmer and genteel era.

Mary Ahern Artist Northport Booth. Art for sale

To see and purchase my art anytime of year please visit my website shop. You won’t be disappointed!

 

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Apples in Boxes – Flowers in Squares – New Paintings on an Old Theme by Mary Ahern

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For decades I have been creating art in circles surrounded by squared edges. When I first made this type of work it was in the mid-1970’s. The circle was most often represented by an apple inside a square or cube. At that time it represented to me the yin and yang, female and male complements to our lives and our characters. The apple was an Eve figure, soft, female, curious, playful and seductive. The boxes were the rules, the male, the limitations, the protection and the containment of her attributes.

Apple in Boxes Pointilist drawing by Mary Ahern the Artist

Apples in Boxes – A pointillist drawing in ink on paper. c1970’s

 

I have recently returned to this theme but using flowers from my garden as the subjects rather than apples. It feels so calming to me when I create these voluptuous rounded floral paintings. This peony was the first in a series of exploring again the circle in a square imagery so I named it “Centering” because that is how I feel towards these works. I find my centering in two places, in my studio and in my garden. They completely complement each other, one provided by nature and one in interpreting that vision.

There is a difference between the imagery of then and now. These flowers, though they are encompassed in a square format canvas, they are not contained. They are bursting through the limitations of frame, of edges, of inhibition. They are positive and empowered by their form and by their explosive color. They are neither shy nor retiring. They declare themselves as having established their own space. They are declaring themselves as individuals.

Centering - Pink Peony Squared. Original oil painting by Mary Ahern the artist.

“Centering – Pink Peony” 36×36″ GW. Oil on Canvas. Original painting by Mary Ahern. To purchase or for additional information please contact the artist here.

 

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Not Just Another Flower Painting

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My Painting Studio. Mary Ahern Artist.

Paintings in progress in my studio. Visit my Art Shop.

The flowers I create in my studio with brush and canvas speak to me beyond their intricacy of form, color, ruffles and swirls. LIke everyone else they initially attract me with the way the color changes as the light graces their outer curves and when it delicately enters their inner recesses, their intimacy. The edges of petals dance like ballerina skirts bouncing in the breeze. Their edges are fluted, scalloped, curved and splayed defining their differences and embracing their similarities of purpose.

I love the architecture of flowers, not just how they grow on their stems, their height, their leaves and their unique outward appearance. I concentrate on the inner architecture of their center parts, the configurations of their pistils and stamens, their anthers laden with pollen. Quite frankly, these flowers are built to seduce their pollinators. The birds and the bees but also the billions of bugs who help by rolling in their pollen to feast and to share and to help create the next generation to grace the earth.

Flowers speak to me of our universe. Our purpose. Our endurance. Each flower is an individual with its own color, shape and form. It’s own choices of community, culture and companionship. It’s own needs for climate, food and water for sustenance. But we all share our need to survive, another season, another year, another generation.

Whether I am among the flowers in my garden or the flowers in my studio, I embrace our diversity and our commonalities. All these flowers in soil or on canvas speak beyond themselves, they’re ideas and thoughts beyond just the visual. They speak to the interior of our purpose and our minds. They are us.

My Garden with rhododendrons and hyacinths

A spring view in my garden makes my heart sing. Visit my Art Shop.

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Why Bigger Flowers Are Better

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Not until I studied botany and viewed flower structures under magnifying glasses and microscopes did I really appreciate their magnificence. As a life-long gardener I looked at and created landscapes, matching groups of plants to be seen from a distance, blending distant views of overall colors and shapes. Matching seasons and cultivation needs, heights and spreads contributing to the designs I created in gardens and on canvas in my landscape paintings.

Tulips in a May Garden. Mary Ahern the Aritst

A rainbow of colors in a friend’s May garden. Photo by Mary Ahern.

But that aha moment of peering dramatically close to the parts of a flower opened a whole new world of vision and contemplation for me.

By painting my flowers overly large and entirely out of scale from the real world, I try to bring that same sense of awe to my viewers. Show them something of what I see. I try to create for them their own aha moment of joy and wonder to take on their journey.

Yellow Tulip Squared

Yellow Tulip Squared. Various size prints available on canvas, fine art paper, metal and acrylic in my online shop.

 

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Why I Never Met Robert Pincus-Witten

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Pincus-Witten, the art critic, curator, historian, author and individual who in 1971 coined the term, “Postminimalism” has died. It reminded me of a brush with greatness that never happened for me. Let me explain.

During my college years in the 1970’s in the Queens College art department program in New York, I was expressing myself with the same underlying emotional & intellectual content in a variety of mediums. It was a time of the emergence of feminism for me and the search for self. An awakening of the world I lived in, was raised in and thought I understood.

Boxed In. Sequential #4. by Mary Ahern Artist

Boxed In. Sequential #4. 12″ cube. Acrylic, Fishing Line, Fiberglass Insulation. © Mary Ahern.

I entered this program as an older student at the age of 27, married with two young children. Needless to say, I didn’t quite fit in with the rest of the much younger student body. Most of my creative work, rather than using the studios on campus, was done at home in my own studio/dining room after I put my sons to bed in the evening. This actually freed me to create more independently than I might otherwise have done.

I followed my own muse. I created sculptures and assemblages using acrylic boxes, clear fishing line, minimalism inspired grids, feminine but painful masses of pink fiberglass insulation. I used distorting mirrors, bindings, weavings of ropes/cords/threads in numerical sequencing. I painted windows where the panes of glass protected or imprisoned using the gridded mullions in defined mathematical ratios. I used graphite, pastel, cut paper & photography to explore my own body landscape and journey of discovery.

All my work at that time explored the balance of male/female, pain/protection, enclosure/exclusion, geometry/biomorphism, math/chaos. One side of me embraced the rigidity, consistency and comfort I found in minimalism but the other part of me was rebelling against those very same norms.

At my senior thesis show, all my work was on display, my sculpture, my drawings, paintings, assemblage, photography and my written papers. Years of independent thought, exploration and interpretation.

Louis Finkelstein was my advisor, a professor I had never met before nor taken a class with but a very prominent and influential person in the NYC art community of which I longed to be a part. He spent a great deal of time viewing my work, reading my papers and asking me questions of motivations & process.

He was impressed by my work. He told me that he said he was going to introduce me to Pincus-Witten and propose me for an independent studio fellowship offered by the Whitney Museum of Art. I was itching all over with the prickles of joy.

And then the ax fell. I mentioned to Prof. Finkelstein that I was in the process of a divorce and just straightening out the details because I had two small children.

Without one further question put to me, without one opportunity for me to elaborate, Finkelstein stood up from his stool (and here is where my memory is a little bit muddy) said either, “A divorced woman can’t be an artist” or “A divorced mother can’t be an artist”. And he walked out of my life taking with him my dreams of ever meeting Robert Pincus-Witten.

Next Step by Mary Ahern

Next Steps. Collage. Color-aid paper. 11×14″ Framed. © Mary Ahern.

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Selecting Lighting for my Painting Studio

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Choosing bulb replacements for perfect lighting in my studio.

Since I have fluorescent fixtures already installed in my painting studio and didn’t want to replace them it narrowed down the search for the type of bulbs i would be looking for. Learning about LED or halogen lighting options, which I might consider if I was designing an entirely new studio, was off my research list. The installed fixtures are 4’ and had a mixture of cool and warm T8 bulbs bought at the local big box store.

Florescent lighting fixture in the studio of Mary Ahern the Artist.

The existing lighting fixtures in my painting studio hold a series of florescent 48″ T8 bulbs.

As soon as I began researching online for the best bulbs for studio lighting I knew the options were very broad and would need more studying. I would need to know what the important specifications would be in selecting the right ambient lighting for working on my paintings and also for proofing digital prints?

In my online searching I stumbled upon a wonderful article by Will Kemp, an Artist & educator from England. He gave some historic references & then went on to explain the technical aspects of lighting.

I learned about the ratings of Kelvin, CRI and Lumens:

K or Kelvin. The color temperature index of cool light at 5500K and a bit warmer light at 4100K seemed to be my goal. I didn’t want to go too cool while creating the Art since most of my work is hung in either residential or corporate lighting environments. Residential incandescent bulbs are in the 2,500K to 3000K range

CRI or color rendering index. I sounded professional when I went to my specialty lighting store and pronounced it correctly, Cree rather than C.R.I. CRI is a measurement of how the lighting reveals colors across the full spectrum when measured against natural daylight. The highest measure is 100 and a good CRI for a painting studio is 85 and up.

Lumens are the measurement of how much light is coming from a bulb. The more lumens the the brighter the light. This differs from wattage which is a measurement of how much energy is used to create the light.

Over the years, as bulbs have burned out in my painting studio fixtures I went to the big box store & bought a warm and a cool fluorescent for each fixture fully well knowing that a more appropriate solution should be available. Recognizing that over the years my lighting had become inconsistent, I decided to bite the bullet & finally do it right.

I was spurred on to optimize my own painting studio by the announcement that the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, which I visit regularly to study their paintings, is completely renovating their gallery lighting over the next few years. You can follow the Met’s lighting project here.

I studied the elements of lighting & then went the specialty lighting store that most of the contractors in my area frequent. Initially the gentleman at the counter said that all I needed was an ordinary fluorescent bulb  which I could buy at any box store. Once I began to speak about the technical aspects of the bulbs I was considering, he became interested & spoke with me at length about the options for my studio. We discussed the temperature of the current lighting and the problems I would have if I went to a higher K or color temperature.

So what did I choose?

I chose a bulb with a Kelvin of 4100K rather than 5500K which is often called a daylight bulb. As mentioned earlier, I was considering the rooms in which my paintings are usually displayed after they are purchased. I should also mention that I have a large 10’ north facing window in my painting studio which offers a good deal of natural light.

I also selected a higher than usual CRI number of 85 to give me a more robust range of colors which displays the full complexity of my subtle pigments. Lower CRI’s don’t always show the full spectrum of yellows.

For the lumens my choice was to select 3250 which was brighter than many of the bulbs they were replacing although the wattage remained the same at 32W.

One consideration that I was nervous about was the thickness of the actual bulb. The existing T8 bulbs were thicker than the ones I took home from the lighting store. My consultant assured me that they would be fine in my fixtures and he was right. Less glass didn’t mean less light.

The price for each bulb was a modest $2.40. Well worth the investement!

The lighting is perfect! Great color balance, brightness, range. It was worth the time I took to do the research. As an Artist, I research my subjects, paints, pigments, mediums, brushes, canvas, etc., etc., etc… So now I can add studio lighting to the list of professional choices I’ve made towards producing excellent Art.

This is the choice of replacement T8 florescent lighting bulbs for the correct balanced lighting in my studio. I didn’t pick by brand name but by specifications.

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Yellow Tulip Squared – The Inspiration Behind a Painting

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Circles in squares always give me comfort for some reason or another. This particular yellow tulip gave me comfort during the tail end of a winter when I sorely needed color flooding into my eyes.

Yellow Tulip Squared

Yellow Tulip Squared © Mary Ahern. Prints available in various sizes on canvas, fine art paper, metal and acrylic in my Art Shop.

So what do I find as I’m strolling past the senior buffet at Costco but this glass jar filled with joyously bulging and ready to bloom tulips. They just tossed themselves into my cart and begged to be taken home. And home they came.

As the bursting buds thrust themselves open I knew they needed to continue their job of bringing color and joy to my winter and to my spring, my summer and fall. The thrill of painting flowers is that you get to immortalize them before they disappear into their own winter of lifeless existence.

So many paintings came to mind as I watched the tulips unfurl. But which would be my composition. Closed or open? Silhouette or frontal? One or many? Natural sunshine or artificial light? Solid or textured background? Large or small?

So I played with the tulips. Wallowing in their beauty. They seeped into my soul and brought the winter to an end for me.

Being an Artist allows me to create my own reality, my own season, my own vision of how I view the normal. It brings comfort to my soul.

Wall Art - Yellow Tulips by the Artist, Mary Ahern

Costco Tulips dancing in my living room in the winter sunlight.

Being an Artist allows me to create my own reality, my own season, my own vision of how I view the normal. It brings comfort to my soul.

 

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My Garden. My Muse.

My muse, is my garden. Other gardens as well, but my garden in particular. I move in it, feel it, and hear the breezes whisper through it. I watch the lighting during the day as it slides over and around the textured surfaces.

Fire Flame Peony Fine Art Painting by the Artist, Mary Ahern

These Fire Flame Peonies bloom in my garden each year in May at the same time as the color matching azalea.

Lighting so different on days with sun and with clouds. Lighting in the spring with the bright yellow greens of optimistic new growth and lighting by the fall with ambers & tans of a lived life. Morning light offers tender ambiance while afternoon colors not only light the scene from a different direction, the colors are deeper and warmer.

My garden brings consciousness and meaning to me. It keeps me grounded. The ephemeral beauty of an unfertilized blossom studied up close with magnifiers and macro lenses is a representation of a miracle. The world of possibility. The beginning of a story I represent in my Art. I walk through my garden gathering ideas. Stories I want to tell. Suggested ideas I want to convey.

In my garden I spend time designing the landscape or I spend time closely and intimately with a singular specimen at a particular stage of growth. In my studio I may paint a vignette or a full landscape view of a part of the garden I’ve designed, or I may choose to paint a small portion of one flower that has moved me. The minute miracle. This is my work. Outdoors and indoors. These are the stories I tell. This is my Art.

Fire Flame Peony

These Fire Flame Peonies bloom in my garden each year in May at the same time as the color matching azalea.This and other pieces of my Art can be purchased in various sizes on canvas, fine art paper, metal and acrylic in my online Art Shop.

 

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Informational Interview of the Artist, Mary Ahern

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I was asked to do an informational interview by Misty Swan who is working on her college Art degree. Here are her questions and my responses. This interview was done via email.

  1. Please state your name, the name of your business, city and state you live in, and your profession.

Name: Mary Ahern

Business names: Mary Ahern Artist, Reimagined Memories, Fine Art for the Garden and ondesign.com, a website design business.

Place: Northport NY.

Profession: Professional Artist

  1. How long have you been pursuing photography and painting?

I began painting & photography in the mid-1970’s.

  1. What excites you the most about photography and painting?

Creating something out of thin air that no one else had ever seen in the same way that I had.

  1. How much training and education have you received in your field?
  • I graduated with a BA in Fine Arts from Queens College in NY in 1980. During the 70’s, Feminist Art work was on the rise as was Photo-Realism along with many other avant-garde styles. Most of my professors had studios in SOHO, which at the time was the center of the NY art scene. We were encouraged to frequent the galleries, set up interviews with artists and critics and generally be involved in some way with the art scene.
  • After college, and not wanting to starve, I built a career selling computer graphics platforms to the TV broadcast & production industries. In order to sell this technology I had to learn all the graphics & electronic paint systems . Training was provided on the job but I brought my Art background with me.
  • Because of my love of gardens and flowers in 2000 I earned an AAS degree in Ornamental Horticulture exactly twenty years after my BA in Fine Art.
  • To brush up on my drawing skills I returned to school for a 2 year diploma/certification in Botanical Illustration from the New York Botanical Garden graduating in 2004
  • A week never goes by that I don’t take an online webinar in either painting, software or marketing. I have taken so many webinars & seminars over many, many years that it’s too hard to count. I believe in life-long learning.
  • In 2015 I took a 1 year mentorship program in portrait painting from an artist like myself who is based in Louisiana. He pushed me out of my comfort zone to paint people. There is always more to learn, to grow, to expand.
  1. How did you choose your field of photography and painting?

I don’t really understand the question. Do you really choose a field of painting style or does it choose you? My work has evolved as I evolved.

  1. How has the field of photography and painting changed since you started?

This question is really answerable in a dissertation, but here is a snippet.

I believe that technology has changed the field of photography the most. With the introduction of digital cameras the access to photography has reached a greater cohort of people. Mobile phone cameras have grown the accumulation of images exponentially but not necessarily artistically. The bar has been lowered to what the general public assumes is Art.

The field of painting has been less affected by the introduction of electronic paint systems since they, up until now at least, are still not in general use. Also, all the same rules of painting apply to digital as to traditional. It is just another medium in which to work.

  1. What are the most important skills to have in order to be successful in this field?

I am a great communicator, a salesperson, a marketing person. If I didn’t have these skills my Art would accumulate in my closets.

  1. What do you dislike about this field?

I dislike that many potential clients undervalue our work since they have the insane belief that we paint for fun and relaxation. Those are the ones that don’t understand the difference between a Professional Artist and a person who paints as a hobby.

  1. What is your most interesting photo shoot or painting?

I am always drawn to my garden for inspiration. The closer I paint the flowers the better. The colors are rich, the forms are voluptuous, the textures challenging.

  1. What are the things that keep you passionate and motivated in your field?

I constantly reach to learn more. A week never goes by that I don’t learn something new or refresh my knowledge base. I read Art books, I take webinars, I read Art blogs, I go to Art Shows & museums. I am always in a learning mode.

  1. Do you have any words of wisdom for someone entering this field of work?

One thing I was never taught in Art school was how to make a living from my Art. I used my own mental creativity to zig and zag myself into a career in the visual arts.

It is very rare for painters and photographers to make a really decent living from just the narrow vision of what they view as their Art. I had to step outside of my comfort zone in order to support my family but because I did it creatively, I was able to maintain a career with a tangential relationship to the Arts & also maintain a working studio.

As Artists we are creative people. Living creatively doesn’t mean that one has to be a starving Artist. In fact by thinking creatively and widely, you can have a profitable & emotionally fulfilled career. Enjoy!

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Marketing and Preparation Checklist for Giving a Lecture

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The only way for me to efficiently prepare for any upcoming Lecture or Art Show exhibition is to create a checklist of items I need to complete to make a successful event. These contain Marketing items, preparing to show the Art, inventory items for sale & display and the advance staging & rehearsal.

For my latest upcoming Art Lecture at the Long Island Horticultural Society, I worked from this list if items. I really enjoy drawing lines through each task as I complete it so I can move on to the next.

The list is fluid & with each event I have to make adjustments but this is a fairly good outline to begin with.

Lecture To-Do List

Marketing

  • Update my website
  • Write blog post
  • Write & send Press Release
  • Create poster
  • Email poster
  • Create newsletter
  • Email newsletter
  • Post event to Facebook
  • Post event to Fine Art America
  • Post event to HAC
  • Post event to NAC
  • Print price lists
  • Create & print handouts

Art Work

  • Create Planting Fields paintings
  • Get portraits printed
  • Paint mixed media paintings

Inventory

  • Inventory small prints for sale
  • Inventory matted prints for sale
  • Inventory note cards for sale
  • Collect show-&-tell items

Staging & Rehearsal

  • Update power point presentation
  • Stage easels with lighting
  • Stage & test presentation
From the Garden to the Wall- Lecture by the Artist, Mary Ahern

From the Garden to the Wall- Lecture by the Artist, Mary Ahern

 

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Photoshop is 25 years old this year but I have been digitally painting for 30

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The headlines herald the 25th Birthday of the introduction of Photoshop, the photo editing software that almost everyone has heard about and many have used. Photoshop was released on Thursday February 19, 1990, 25 years ago. I, however, began painting electronically years earlier on the Chyron Chameleon Paint System.

1986 Mary Ahern working on the Chyron Chameleon

1986 Mary Ahern working on the Chyron Chameleon at the Cablevision studios in Woodbury NY.

The Chameleon was a digital painting & editing system complete with dedicated hardware & software aimed at the Broadcast TV & production industry.. Primitive by our current standards but tremendously advanced at that time in the mid-1980’s.

In order to sell a paint system in the ‘80’s, since no one really understood the enormous creative possibilities of computer painting, I did demonstrations & lectures in order to sell this tremendously creative tool. It offered drawing tools & brushes, cut & paste, zoom, a removable hard drive, video outputs and 8 bits of color.

I have made a very good living using Photoshop, amongst other digital imaging programs, but I was able to apply my Artist’s vision first using the tablet & stylus of the Chameleon.

So I wish Photoshop a very Happy 25th Birthday but they are the young kid on the block. I have been digitally painting for 30 years.

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Artist Mother – Mother Artist

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Artist Mother – Mother Artist
One and the same. Complements in name.
Work unending, always tending
To seek the insights needed to know,
to nourish – to form – to grow.

Taken for granted, demands expanded,
Desire for life on a higher standard.
Creative, depletive, rewarding, absorbing.
Continuous rebirth of the most generous kind.

Writing by Mary Ahern Feb. 20, 1978

Artist Mother - Mother ArtistSketch by Mary Ahern October, 27, 2013

 

 

 

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Preparing Prints For an Art Show

Here is a video which I originally created in July of 2013 of how I prepare prints for display and sale at outdoor art festivals .

I took these video clips in my studio as I prepared for the Northport Art in the Park hosted by the Northport Arts Coalition.

I used a Canon Power Shot SD3500 IS Digital ELPH, holding it in one hand and demonstrating with the other. I used the audio from the camera which is muffled at times since I put my finger over the microphone. I originally started with 18 minutes of video clips and brought it down to about 4:15.

I edited in iMovie with the end credits created in Photoshop.

Fun little project which I wish I’d given myself more time to perfect but there are always choices to be made. Time being the one thing I can’t seem to stretch.

You can see this and other video on my YouTube Channel: youtube.com/user/MaryAhernArtist

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The Composition of the Matisse Painting of The Dance Influenced my Blue Iris Painting

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Studying Art History seeps into your memory. Countless visits to the many museums and galleries that New York City has to offer has crept into my subconscious. This lifelong study has taken me through so many happy surprises as well as quite a number of dead ends.

Often Artists are asked who their influences have been for their Art style. Trust me,  never would I have answered Matisse. I’ve never appreciated his sketchy use of paint, his lack of detail and apparent lack of a “finished” quality to his work.

And then, when I least expected it, I reimagined Matisse’s iconic painting, “The Dance”.  Using flowers from my own garden, I picked up the exuberant rhythm that makes his work such a delight. This work is so light, buoyant and a wonderful interpretation of what spring means to me.

As I was creating the composition of Irises I remember somewhere, behind my eyes, trying to make the circular floating connections of the frilly irises that was suspended somewhere in my memory. I have stood so often in front of the Matisse painting at the Museum of Modern Art, loving the composition while not liking the paint quality. I’ve returned so often to view that painting in the original hoping to find what I missed.

I absorbed his painting just by being there and looking. And looking again. And again…Mary Ahern Artist and Henri Matisse Painting Composition

“…man is a bundle of relations, a knot of roots,
whose flower and fruitage is the world…”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Mary Ahern Artist - Mixed Media Painting - Light Blue Iris in the Garden

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Some Steps When Curating & Designing an Art Show

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Curating an Art Show takes many steps and stages. The process begins with the organization sponsoring the event. They are responsible for setting the dates and timetables of the show, the selection of Artists and in this case, establishing and maintaining a cooperative working relationship with the owners of the hosting venue.

The organization that is sponsoring the Art Show decides if they are hosting a One-Person Art Show or a Group Exhibit and where the venue will be held. This information is included in their prospectus.

For the Art Show I’m having from August 28 through October 9th, 2012, I downloaded the prospectus from the Northport Arts Coalition (aka NAC) website here. Most organizations now offer their applications & information online.

In this case, I applied for a One-Person Show to be held over a 6-7 week period at the Wine Cellar on Main in downtown Northport NY. I was notified of my acceptance and given about a one-month lead time to prepare for the showing.

Normally the lead time for an opportunity for a large show like this is quite a bit longer but I was pleased with the opportunity to show my work so I quickly accepted their offer.

A view of my studio while staging for the Art Show

Depending on the organization the curating of the actual show is done either by a designated person within that group or the individual Artists whom they’ve selected for a show.

Since I have decades of experience managing and curating my own and other events I have a particular method of working. In another post, I discussed how I started planning & curating my show. Curating in the sense I wrote about is the decision making process of how the show will look and what work I have available to show.

I usually have various paintings of mine in multiple group shows over a wide variety of time slots & locations so I keep comprehensive records of where my Art Work is allocated at any given time & where the work is scheduled to be shown.

I also know what work is in the process of being created & when the work will be available for the next showing.

Curating is many things. These include finding the venues, selecting the Artists, designing the show itself and creating and executing the marketing campaign.

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Strategies for Planning & Curating my Own Art Show

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So I applied and was accepted for a one-person Fine Art Show at the new Wine Cellar on Main in Northport NY from August 28 through October 8th, 2012. The acceptance email was the fun part & then the stress factor hit me within moments.

Yikes. I’m a curator now.

What paintings would I show? How many pieces of Art? What size paintings would look right. How would I stage the show hanging? And since it was such short notice, (one-month) how quickly could I pull this whole show together efficiently & still enjoy life?

Here’s what I did.

Site survey of the Wine Cellar on Main with my friend Greg Oleanik’s show in place.

Side wall of Greg Oleanik’s show at the Wine Cellar on Main

I took my point & shoot camera, pencil, paper & a sturdy metal measuring tape & scouted out the available show space. Luckily, my friend Greg Oleanik currently had a show hanging there so I was able to take snapshots of all his work hanging in place.

Mock-up of what size paintings I will need for my upcoming Art Show

Side wall mock-up for my Art Show planning

I measured the height & widths of all the available spaces within the room, keeping them sequentially numbered along with photos of each space.  I spoke with the proprietor, Lindsay Ostrander & we discussed the fact that she had installed a hanging system with rails & rods so that I wouldn’t need to put nails in her walls. This info I took back to my studio & headed for the computer.

I imported the photos into Photoshop. I created a panorama of the interior hanging space with photos of Greg’s show. Then I made a mock-up of the walls & created placeholders for the different sizes of my own Artwork since I know what sizes of Art I generally work in.

With this in place I was able to count how many and what sizes of paintings I would need to have available to put into the Art Show.

I felt calmer already. Next step was planning on how much creating was ahead of me & what I could possibly hope to accomplish in such a short span of time while also leaving me time to publicize the show. I wanted to make sure I left enough time to share the news about the show with family, friends, and with all my past, present & future customers.

 

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Friends of the Delaware Canal Sporting their Mary Ahern Yellow Daffodil T-shirts

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These are the creative and committed women aka “Commuting Women” who took part in the Delaware Canal Festival winning the “Most Beautiful” decorated canoe prize. These women took part in planting thousands of daffodil bulbs along the canal & other prominent locations this past spring.

I was pleased to donate my “Single Daffodil” artwork for use on their team T-Shirts. I applaud their energy, their commitment to the beautification of their community & their sense of humor. Kudos!

Mary Ahern the Artist helping out the Friends of the Delaware by donating her Single Yellow Daffodil image for their T-shirts

Friends of the Delaware Canal sporting their Yellow Daffodil shirts celebrating their planting of thousands of daffodil bulbs along the canal & other prominent Yardley locations.

This is a copy of a letter they sent when they donated their prize money winnings to The Friends of the Delaware Canal.

Friends of the Delaware Canal

The Locktender’s House

145 South Main St.

New Hope PA 18938

Dear Friends,

Enclosed is a check for $75.00 payable to the Friends of the Delaware Canal, representing the prize money the “Commuting Women” won for our “Most Beautiful” decorated canoe in the Yardley Boat Parade as part of the Delaware Canal Festival.

Friends of the Delaware Canal award winning entry in the Yardley Boat Parade

The award by the “Commuting Women” for “Most Beautiful” decorated canoe in the Yardley Boat Parade as part of the Delaware Canal Festival.

Our theme was “Thank You Bucks Beautiful,” celebrating and thanking the Bucks Beautiful organization for planting thousand of daffodil bulbs along the canal and in other prominent Yardley locations. When the daffodils all bloomed this spring, it was a spectacular sight!

Our group is comprised of “mature” women who commute to work in Philadelphia, either currently or in the past, on SEPTA Regional Rail trains. We had lots of fun planning and constructing our boat parade entry, and we are proud of our ingenuity and resourcefulness – using only items we already had on hand around the house. Lots of paper plates, muffin cups, skewers, and plastic tablecloths – as one young observer commented, “That’s a lot of arts and crafts.”

Along the way we made a new friend, Mary Ahern, from Northport NY who generously donated her daffodil art design to our matching parade-day T-shirts.

All in all, a fun and rewarding experience. Thanks for a great day – this is why we chose to live in the small towns along the Delaware Canal. We are happy to donate our prize winnings to the Friends of the Delaware Canal.

Sincerely,

Leslie Jordan

Virginia Hamby, Yardley

Dorothy Judd, Washington Crossing

Jeannette Leighton, Yardley

Mary Ahern the Artist's "Single Yellow Daffodil"

Mary Ahern’s “Single Yellow Daffodil which was used as the image for the Friends of the Delaware Canal T-shirts.

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Huntington Arts Council Spotlight Artist of the Month – Mary Ahern

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Another Type of Canvas

Mary Ahern is an artist member of the Huntington Arts Council. Much of her art is inspired by her garden, a piece of art in its own right that is constantly changing. Her husband, Dave, often comments that her plants seem to be on wheels since Mary is constantly moving her plants from flowerbed to flowerbed. She uses the texture and color of the plants to create beautiful works of art in her garden.

The peonies bloom in June
In Northport NY the peonies bloom in June

Walking through Mary’s garden and listening to her speak about it reveals how much thought was put behind each and every placement. Mary uses her plants to create artwork just as she uses oil paint. Each plant has specific colors or textures that can be used to compliment or contrast the other plants it is put with. Certain beds of flowers are based on the color of those certain plants, i.e., mixing deep reds with frosted greens. Others are based on the texture of the plant, i.e. small leaves, low ground covering, etc.

However it doesn’t stop there. Each of these flowerbeds is incorporated into the garden as a whole and even the pathways that flow between each have been carefully laid out. The flowers that Ahern cultivates influence her artwork greatly. She likes to have samples of the subjects she is working on around her. “I’m not trying to duplicate what a camera can do. I’m interpreting in a realistic style how I see the subject.”

The Krinkled White is a single peony prized for its simplicity
The Krinkled White is a single peony prized for its simplicity

When you step into Mary’s home and studio, it is as though the garden is continuing inside as well. Her art work adorns the walls and upstairs in the studio her love for the garden is transformed into pieces of art.

Mary was first introduced to gardening by her Uncle Teddy who was a gardener himself. “Every time we visited, I loved to help him in the garden and when I acquired my first plant at around the age of five, I made it very clear to everyone in my family that I was the only one allowed to care for it. Since I have always held a passion for the garden, it was only natural that it showed up in my artwork.”

Mary uses many different mediums to create her works of art. They include oils, watercolors, and digital painting. The amount of care and detail incorporated in each piece is absolutely astounding. She creates Digital Flower and Shell Paintings as well as  paintings using Traditional media.

Mary has been digitally designing for over 25 years now. She first started at Chyron Corporation, located in Melville, working in Sales and Marketing Positions. Later, Mary began her own graphic design company called Online Design which, at that time, was one of the few to be 100% digital.

Although Mary Ahern has been painting for over 30 years now, as a young child she never really became interested in the arts. Music was a large influence during her high school years: she was in the band and even conducted, which was rare for a women to do during that time.

It wasn’t until Mary was in her 20’s that she became interested in art, when one of her friends gave her a book about the work of the artist, Georgia O’Keeffe  This influenced her to take a class at the local Y and when she picked up the paintbrush she knew it was her calling. “The paintbrush seemed like an extension of my arm. Since then art has never been a hobby but a part of my life.” She went on from there and got a degree in Fine Arts from Queens College and has been creating ever since.

Four different background treatments of the Krinkled White Peony
Four different background treatments of the Krinkled White Peony

For those interested in pursuing a career in the arts Mary’s advice is to develop business and marketing skills in addition to the skills you develop to create your Art.   The web and social networking sites make marketing available  to everyone. “Whether it’s a website, a blog and alsoTwitter, Facebook or a combination, it is important for potential buyers to see the artist behind the paintings because that also helps to sell your art.”

She believes that a career in the arts is a very tough “glamour” business and you must have entrepreneurial skills as well as lots of determination to be successful. Mary Ahern also states that there are not many things more rewarding then to have someone who has purchased one of her Fine Art pieces tell her how much pleasure they have received every day from seeing her work hanging in their home  It makes her smile.

• To see some of her beautiful artwork, head over to her website,

http://MaryAhernArtist.com.

• Visit her Garden at her blog

The Garden Artist – My Garden, My Art, Where Passions Merge

http://MaryAhernArtist.com/garden-blog/

• View behind the scenes of an Artist on her Art Blog

Art Naturally – Musings Of My Life As An Artist

http://MaryAhernArtist.com/art-blog/

• Mary’s step-daughter Sharon Ruedeman made a video about her garden which you can view on YouTube at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJTAh3dBrps

This article was derived from an interview with Mary Ahern, The Garden-Artist by Diane Brown and produced by Dianne Matus of the Huntington Arts Council.

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