Tag Archives: Being an Artist

Awakenings in the Garden: An Artist’s Journey

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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.

Mary in Her Studio Working on Phaelanopsis Orchid (December 2020)

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,

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​ on Oil ~ 24 x 24 inches. Deep Cradled Hardboard

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.

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A Virtual Visitor Had Me Contemplating My Lifelong Career in the Arts

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Judy Chicago

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

 

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My Dual Passions – Art and Gardening

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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.

1985 – Mary Ahern in the Cablevision studio working with the Chameleon electronic paint system.

Mary-painting-the white iris in her studio

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.

Woodland Garden entrance.

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 

 

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The Start of my Art Journey

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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!

 

And that began my art supply addiction ;-).

Peach Still LIfe Painting by the artist, Mary Ahern

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.

Studio wall in 2019

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.

 

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This Artist’s Dilemma. Storage.

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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.

Art in storage on shelves

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!

 

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Behind the Scenes Preparations for a Solo Art Exhibition

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Mary Ahern hanging artwork

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 →

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Learning is Living

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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.

Purple-Phalaenopsis WIP

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.

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My Brush With Wolf Kahn

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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.

Mary Ahern - Queens Village 1

Queens Village 1 – 1976 -Oil on Canvas.

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I Don’t Wear Red. I Don’t Even Like the Color Red. So I Painted a Red Dahlia

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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.

Mary Ahern Studio
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How Long Did It Take You To Paint That?

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Mary Ahern Painting in her studio.

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.

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Joseph Raffael 1933 – 2021 – An Appreciation

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Joseph Raffael February 22, 1933 -July 12, 2021

Joseph Raffael
February 22, 1933 -July 12, 2021

One of my heroes died this week. Joseph Raffael was an artist who spoke and will always speak to my soul. We lived in different places. Lived different lives. Worked in different mediums. He was famous but left the NY art scene to live quietly in the south of France. I never made it big enough in NYC to have to leave it. But I live in the quiet town of Northport on the north shore of Long Island. We have each experienced different successes in our lives. A man, a woman, so different but so the same.

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Changing My Mind About Genre and Purpose in my Art

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Over the last few years, my art has shifted away from painting what I think will be popular. Selling lots of prints, in lots of sizes both online and offline, I knew I could make piles of money in my sleep. What fun!

That thinking is no longer my goal for making my art. Don’t get me wrong, I love selling, it’s in my blood. It was my career for many years. But times have changed for me. Circumstances have changed too. I’ve stepped out of the rat race. Out of the business world strictly speaking.

I stopped painting for cash. Stopped picking the most popular flowers, in the most popular colors, in the sizes that sell the most.

I’ve turned inward. I’ve begun writing about what matters in my life, in my world. I care more now about my work being a form of meditation. An opportunity to ponder our place in the universe.  My flowers are to me a symbol. A microcosm of the universe.

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Mary Ahern Artist Biography

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VORACIOUSLY CONSUMING LIFE

Mary Ahern Painting in the StudioThrough the twisting paths and obstacles in life, the two constants for me have been my Art and my Garden. These are my anchors. They keep me balanced, complete, secure. The arrival of spring flings me from my studio where I’ve been creating my Art all winter, into the emerging garden surrounding my studio.  The colors shout optimism to me. The joyous season has begun again. This is where I grow my subjects and gather the imagery for my work.

I’ve been an Artist for eons, exploring as all true Artists do, a myriad of subjects and with enough mediums that fill drawers and cabinets throughout my studio. I’ve been zigging and zagging throughout my journey with all the bumps and joyous bursts I could grab. Some of my work through the years has had autobiographical underpinnings, some of it was icy flat. I’ve worked big and I’ve worked small. But when it comes down to it, I love color.

RIFFING ON CLASSICAL ART

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Painting Process – Painting the Edges

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Today I painted for four hours on a painting that everyone thought was finished but I hadn’t yet signed. Everyone loved it but me. I really liked the composition, a rounded peony in a square frame. What’s not to love?

But the edges weren’t working for me. Not the edges of the outside of the canvas, the edges where paint meets paint. Where does one color transition to another? Is the edge hard or soft? Does it blend? Does it pick up color from the adjacent color? Does it offer a stark contrast in tone to the color next to it?

Is that color warm or cool that it’s bumping up against? Warm colors advance, cool colors recede. Is one petal in front of the other? Where is the light coming from? Is there a shadow? If the petal of the flower is warm, the shadow would be cool.

Subtle Exhuberance - Tree Peony: Detail

Subtle Exhuberance – Tree Peony: Detail. Oil Painting on Canvas. To see the finished painting click here!

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Living and Painting in Layers

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Last week we had temperatures in the 30’s every day. The clocks changed and now it’s dark by 4:30 where I live. That may sound pretty grim but for me, it signals the opportunity to go into my studio to paint without the tugging and nagging feeling that I should be out in the garden, planting, weeding, pruning, and planning. Now, guilt-free I’m in my studio creating the paintings of the flowers from summer.

And guess what? Yesterday, today and for the next few days, the temperatures have returned to the 70’s. So the sunshine has seduced me back into the garden. Finally today I finished planting the 100 plus bulbs I bought on some wild spending spree a few weeks ago. The daffodils, the oriental, martagon lilies are in. The bearded iris have been planted in the little nooks and crannies where there is some sunshine. And all the five different kinds of alliums are finally in the ground.

Alliums, you may or may not know are onions, these are ornamental onions. Not the kind I cooked dinner with tonight. I made a new recipe with spanish onions, turkey sausages, grapes, cumin, vinegar, roasted potatoes, and some of the meager crop of tomatoes I grew from seed this year.

As I cut up the onions I thought about all their layer upon layers. Which led me to think about my paintings. I paint in layers. Layer upon layer of thin transparent paint. As the painting comes into existence it reminds me of my darkroom days and watching the photograph begin to arrive in the chemical baths. I tend to work all over the surface so the entire painting emerges pretty much at the same time.

My paintings are very much like me. Like you. Like everyone. We’re all layers upon layers of information, experience, emotion, and intellect. Interest and drive are hidden in there too. Hopes and dreams also come to mind. Many people don’t like to look below the first layer of who they are. I, on the other hand, dug deep into the bone marrow to find the core of what makes me tick. Then I covered it up so the rest of the world wouldn’t find it easily. Keeping that core wrapped in swaddling clothes held closely, is one of the mysteries I keep safe and protected from the seasons of change.

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