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My Late Winter Garden

The Garden Artist Posted on April 7, 2008 by Mary AhernAugust 11, 2009

I am a gardener.

As a botanical artist, I use my garden as the inspiration for my work. I also use it as a fitness gym to keep me healthy, strong and flexible. The other side benefit that no gardener ever mentions is that the more gardening you do the more ice-cream you can eat without gaining weight. Isn’t that enough reason to take up gardening?

Hamemelis x intermedia ‘Arnold Promise’ lighting up my late winter garden.My witch hazel, otherwise known as Hamamelis x intermedia ‘Arnold Promise’, begins blooming in February in my neck of the woods. I’m located in zone 6, on Long Island, NY in the United States which is latitude 40.900N and longitude -73.343W. The elevation is listed as 59 feet but I’m at the top of a series of hills so I’m a bit higher up from the town harbor. This means that I get a little bit more snow than other parts of my town and it lasts longer.

This photo was taken on March 1, 2008 and it shows the view from my kitchen window. Looking slightly left, through the V shaped branches of my Paperbark maple, you can see the witch hazel in bloom. I planted that shrub in August of 1999 and it lights up the garden for close to two months beginning in February.

Celebratory strings of confetti herald the coming of spring on my witch hazel.

I positioned it as a focal point to pull my eye out to the woodland walks. I wanted to see the cheerful yellow color from warmth of my kitchen without having to brave the elements on a cold late winter day. It is such a welcome harbinger of spring that it often seduces me to brave the cold to see what else might possibly be in bloom so early in the year.

Ribbons of paper thin confetti dangle from the branches as if in anticipation of celebrating the spring season.

Posted in Garden Artist, My Garden | Tagged Garden Artist, Garden Design, My Garden

Chasing Dreams, The Long Hard Road

The Garden Artist Posted on January 30, 2008 by Mary AhernAugust 11, 2009

You would think that if you were given the gift of reinventing yourself into a career which would be more personally satisfying emotionally and without consideration of financial income, you would instantly jump into the deep end of the pool.

Well, I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t work like that. When my new husband Dave, gave me the gift of reinventing myself at the age of 50 I felt overwhelmed. What I found was that for all the years as a single parent when I was working without a net, I put my blinders on and just charged forward.

Yes, I had morphed my career repeatedly to keep it tailored to my strengths and to keep it as interesting as I possibly could. Yes, I had given up corporate America to form my own company when I got a concussion on the glass ceiling. Yes, I was more aware than most of what parts of my careers I enjoyed and what parts I did not.

So here you are at midpoint looking for a new career that will fulfill you in a different way than your original career. You may have enjoyed your work and the environment and friends you made along the way. But you may have outgrown it or outgrown the need for the tradeoffs you made in order to pursue the work.

My Garden BootsYour children may have grown and college is paid for. Your health status may have changed or you no longer want to be on planes four days a week like I did for many years. Your marital status may have changed for the worse or for the better as mine did when I married Dave after 17 years between my two marriages.

Chasing your dream is not easy. It takes courage to look deeply inside yourself. It takes courage to be honest about your long and shortcomings. It is a long and often hard journey to rediscover yourself.

The journey begins with just one step. Take it.

Tagged Career Changing, Dream Chasing

Searching for the Dream Seems Easy. It’s Not.

The Garden Artist Posted on January 29, 2008 by Mary AhernAugust 11, 2009

On January 5, 2008 I was featured in an article in Newsday titled “Dream Chasers.” The subject was the choices and sacrifices some people make when deciding to step off the corporate treadmill in order to pursue more emotionally or spiritually rewarding careers without regard to financial restraints.

The author of the article, Arlene Gross, wrote about the choices, decisions and sacrifices of five different individuals. The various paths we chose to explore in our second careers are as different as our paths in our initial and primary wage earning pursuits.

Noel Rubinton, the editor of the Act Two section of Newsday, however, hit on a different issue when he encouraged people to use the New Year as an opportunity to explore yourself even if you couldn’t at this time make the giant leap of a whole new career.

Noel wrote that, “A line that really resonated in our cover story came from Mary Ahern… finding that switch took work. ‘The hard part at first was trying to find inside myself what that dream actually was. You spend so much time marching forward and doing what you do, you lose the essence of yourself’.”

When my husband Dave gave me as a wedding gift, which coincided with my 50th birthday, the opportunity to re-invent myself you would think I would have immediately jumped into my studio. Instead I whined and anguished for a months over what I wanted to do with this great new vista open to me.

I was so overwhelmed with the immense possibilities I now had available to me that I suffered each day trying to make the right decision with this precious gift. I spent so much time trying to fathom what makes me tick, what intellectually interests me, what direction would support my value system, what new career would be feasible and sustainable for the next 30 or so years, what would not impinge on the home life that we had just found together and cherished so much.

I talked about it endlessly. I beat it to death. I’m sure there were times that Dave wished he hadn’t made the offer since I was so annoying in my pursuit of the “what if’s”. Massage therapist? Lawyer? Chiropractor? Quite frankly, I never even considered Artist.

I knew one thing for sure. I was tired of computers and wanted to become a Luddite. And then one Saturday morning, sitting on our deck having coffee surrounded by the gardens I designed and have worked on for decades, Dave suggested that since we loved the gardens so much and they gave such joy to people, why not design gardens for others.

BANG!

2002-05 Mary planting her tropical garden Ten days later I was enrolled as a full-time student in the Ornamental Horticulture Program at Farmingdale. I knew I wanted to be a landscape designer and this was the best beginning. Two years later I graduated with my degree and a new career.

Posted in Career Changing, Garden Artist | Tagged Career Changing, Dream Chasing, Garden Design, Gardening

Over Thirty Years of Chasing My Dream

The Garden Artist Posted on January 28, 2008 by Mary AhernAugust 11, 2009

After seeing the photos and reading the article Dream Chasers, written by Arlene Gross for Newsday, which featured myself among others who have turned in mid-life to careers which are more personally satisfying, I have enjoyed revisiting my journey.

1976 Mary Ahern at the Floral Park Art LeagueHere is a photo of me with my Award winning oil paintings at the Floral Park Art League in 1976. I painted them all before I began my college Art education. For a year I took oil painting classes on Wednesday evening at the YMCA in Bellerose Queens NY and from this experience I found my life’s calling.

Each year I looked forward to showing my work at this outdoor art show and each year I sold some of my works. What a wonderful experience it is to realize that work you created from your own imagination and from assorted colors in tubes moved others in such a way that they will give you money that they earned so they can hang your vision on their walls. I am still moved that my skill and vision will enhance their lives each and every day.

2007-05-28 Mary on cell phone answering questions at the Washington Square Outdoor Art Show, NYCThirty-one years later I’ve returned to selling my Artwork outdoors at festivals. This shot of me was taken while I was taking a call on my cell phone at the Washington Square Outdoor Art Festival in New York City in May of 2007. I still enjoy getting out of my studio and meeting people. Speaking to my customers energizes me and personalizes the selling experience. At shows I always enjoy seeing some of my former customers who come by to say hello and tell me where they hung the Art they’ve bought from me and how much they enjoy seeing it everyday.

It doesn’t get better than that!

Tagged Career Changing, Dream Chasing

Dream chaser Newsday article

The Garden Artist Posted on January 5, 2008 by Mary AhernAugust 2, 2018

Today I was featured in a Newsday Business section article written by Arlene Gross. The excerpt focusing on my background and my life choices is copied below. If you’d like to see the article in it’s entirety you can see it on my website in the News section.

Dream chasers

At midlife, taking lower pay to begin more satisfying careers

By Arlene Gross

Special to Newsday
11:07 AM EST, January 4, 2008

Newsday photo of Mary Ahern at ComputerMary Ahern had dabbled in art for many years, but had never been able to actually make a career of it. Until four years ago, that is, when she made the switch to full-time artist.

“I had always been a creative artist,” the Northport resident, 60, explained. “Life, however, intervened, and as a single parent, I was never able to create my art on a full-time basis.”

Changing careers at midlife is no small feat, and switching to one with substantially less earning potential is more difficult still. According to Randy Miller, founder and president of ReadyMinds, an online career counseling service, downsizing a career can be a source of great anxiety.

Newsday photo of Mary Ahern painting in studioYet for some people, any fear or hesitation is mitigated by the yearning to follow a dream. Seeking more spiritually uplifting endeavors can be the ultimate challenge, and Miller said any attendant loss of income is often compensated with a renewed sense of purpose and newfound happiness.

“There are a lot of people who go through life and think, ‘What if?'” Miller said. “With a strategic plan, coupled with the new passion and ultimate objective of doing something different, one can more easily achieve their ultimate goals.”

For Ahern, a new husband provided the impetus and financial support to move forward. Income, the couple concluded, was less relevant to the quality of their lives than the legacy they wish to leave behind.

“When we married, Dave urged me to follow my dream,” she recalled. “The hard part at first was trying to find inside myself what that dream actually was. You spend so much time marching forward and doing what you do, you lose the essence of yourself.”

Once their five children — all from previous marriages — were finished with college, Ahern felt it was OK to follow her calling.

“My income from my art doesn’t yet come close to the money I’m used to making in either my career in computer graphics equipment sales or my own graphics design firm,” she said.

One of her greatest sacrifices was a big dip in retirement savings, which now come exclusively from her husband’s salary.

“We have a comfortable nest egg,” she said, “but by coming out of a conventional career, I no longer have the extra cushion to add to my existing portfolio of tax-advantaged savings vehicles.”

Despite her diminished earnings, Ahern says she is happier. “I am living the life I am meant to live,” she said.

Posted in Career Changing, Garden Artist | Tagged Art, Being an Artist, Career Changing, Creativity, Dream Chasing, Garden Artist, Musings, My Art

Mary Ahern has green thumb for botanicals, business

The Garden Artist Posted on January 3, 2008 by Mary AhernAugust 2, 2018
Excerpt of Article posted in The Times of Northport

Artist cultivates her livelihood like a garden

By Arlene Gross
June 13, 2007 | 02:39 PM

Northport resident Mary Ahern is a successful artist who practices a unique technique she describes as. “Digital Mixed Media Painting”.

Mary Ahern has green thumb for botanicals, business. Mary Ahern Artist

Mary Ahern enjoying her garden peonies.

But Ahern, who… (was) among the exhibitors at Arts in the Park in Northport July 8, (2007) was not born an artist. “I didn’t come to paint until I was older,” she said. “I didn’t even know I had a facility for it.”

As a young girl, she focused on music: playing trumpet and saxophone for the high school band and conducting her Fort Hamilton High School graduation in Brooklyn with a rousing rendition of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.

“I’ve been in the bleeding edge of those kinds of issues,” she said. “In those days, girls didn’t conduct.”

A life-changing moment came in her 20s, when a friend gave her a coffee table book of Georgia O’Keeffe’s paintings.

“I opened it up and turned the pages and wept,” she recalled. “It was completely transforming. I could only look at 10 pictures a day, it was so overwhelming.”

From that moment, Ahern knew she must study art and, then a resident of Queens, attended Queens College.

Although she was influenced by O’Keeffe and painted similar subjects, such as close-up and sensual florals, Ahern said she did not mimic her idol’s technique. Whereas O’Keeffe painted with direct and rapid strokes, Ahern’s traditional paintings were created in grisaille, or gray scale, and layered with washes of pigment on top, giving the subjects a glow through the optical blending of glazes of pigment.

After divorcing her first husband, Ahern took a job at Barnard College’s career counseling office, where she herself was able to get some career guidance. Through her Barnard position, she attended Columbia University for free by working there while raising sons, Chris and Michael, then ages 10 and 8.

“I knew if I couldn’t stay home and be a mom and paint, I had to make a decision: I’m going to make as much money as possible,” she said.

With profit in mind, Ahern went into technology sales, selling computer graphics and eventually becoming Northeast regional sales manager at Chyron Corporation in Melville. Then she started Online Design, a digital graphics company.

For Ahern, feminism was not a word to bandy about but, rather, her day-to-day reality – working as a single mother in a male-dominated industry.

“My single-minded focus on providing a good life for my sons enabled me to ignore the tremendous obstacles, prejudice, emotional assault and loneliness that comes from breaking through social barriers,” she said. “I, like my father, pulled myself up by my bootstraps. As a woman in a male industry however, I, like Ginger Rogers, did everything in high heels and backwards.”

In 1989, Ahern fulfilled her dream of buying a house with a spacious garden in Northport, which she said, “was like a step back in time to a slower and more gracious lifestyle.”

“The center of town with a Main Street embedded with trolley tracks leading to the harbor breezes and music in the gazebo captured my attention and insisted upon my attendance. I needed to move here.”

Eleven years later, she renovated her home, adding an airy, second floor art studio, and now natural light trickles throughout.

The garden, which Ahern designed, encircles the house, with its artfully designated focal points and meandering paths, everything flowing gracefully.

“I practice nonviolent gardening – no rose bushes to stab you – all soft inviting plants,” she said.

Seventeen years after her first marriage ended, Ahern married David Ruedeman, an engineer at Chyron. The couple worked together there but got to know one another only when he became a client of Online Design. This year will mark the couple’s 10th anniversary…

Early on in the second marriage, wishing to reinvent herself, Ahern got a degree in horticulture from SUNY Farmingdale in 2000, with the idea of becoming a landscape designer, which she did for a year. “It was too much for my … body,” she said, of the many hours spent working on bended knees.

From there, it was a two-year course studying botanical illustration at the New York Botanical Gardens in the Bronx.

Her (Mixed Media) painting, a culmination of expertise paralleling her life’s progressive journey, combines a passion for the fine arts, gardening, computer graphics and botanical painting.

“To be creative, you need to know your medium,” Ahern said of her computer graphics skills. Through her paintings, she seeks to make people look around them and become more aware of the nature surrounding us.

Dr. Roberta Koepfer, her friend since 1971, said, “She’s like a phoenix. I have seen her rise up from a fair number of devastating experiences. Every time she comes back, she comes back more dynamic, more focused on her art and with an increased zest for life and personal growth.”

When it came time to sell her art, Ahern’s business savvy came in handy; she started in Northport as an exhibitor at the annual Arts in the Park series (in 2004) and now participates in about 15 art shows in New York and Connecticut between May and September, with her husband lending a hand.

Ahern’s work has also been the focus of several gallery exhibitions, including a one-person show at Greenlawn’s Harborfields Library this past February.

Susan Hope, gallery coordinator for the library, noted that Ahern’s exhibit was well timed: her cheerful florals brightened the gloom of winter. “It has an eye catching appeal,” she said. “People really enjoyed it, whether they were art savvy or just seniors on their way to their meetings.”

Today, Ahern is either painting her botanicals, selling them or lecturing on the business of art at libraries or schools, although her business persona has changed radically over the years. “I did trade shows in high heels and silk suits,” she said, “now I’m doing business in Birkenstocks and shorts.”

To anyone seeking career guidance, Ahern advised, “Don’t throw away anything you’ve done because you want to transform yourself. Take the good portions, the positive elements and try to incorporate them into this new self you’re creating. That’s how I’m living my life.”

Posted in Garden Artist, My Garden | Tagged Being an Artist, Creativity, Garden Artist, Musings, My Garden

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