Garden Writings Archives - Mary Ahern Artist

Awakenings in the Garden: An Artist’s Journey

Posted on September 30, 2024 by Mary AhernJune 9, 2025

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, December 2020)
© Mary Ahern

Over time the education I am receiving from the garden has been changing me. My artwork reflects 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.

Originally published in Sanctuary Magazine. July 2024 and in my Art Blog here

Oh Dear, I Now Have Deer

Posted on March 21, 2024 by Mary AhernJune 9, 2025

I first noticed it in the fall. Something had eaten my hostas. My usual culprits have been the rabbits, but this was well beyond their usual food shopping spree. Perhaps they decided to invite their entire extended family this time. The raccoons ate all the minnows in my new small pond, so they weren’t hungry either. So I decided to install Ring cameras to see who was having a party in my garden while I innocently slept.

And there he was, a huge antlered deer. Oh Dear!

Daytime Deer in my Garden. I don’t know who was more scared, him or me.

The next day, I bought a battery-operated sprayer and researched what would work best to preserve my precious garden. Most of the products not only smelled bad enough to ward off the deer, but they also smelled bad enough to keep me out of the garden as well. I found one brand that also contained some mint, which apparently the deer hate, so that’s the one I settled on. So last fall, after every rainy day, I would head out to spray the perimeter of my garden. This year, I’m upping my game since the buck brought his harem and extended family.

In the front garden this deer ate all my hostas in one sitting. I was wondering if he was going to ask for some salad dressing.

I’m having deer fencing installed in the part of the garden where they most frequently gain entrance in the hopes of diverting their attention. This happened to be on the property line with my new neighbor. Using the markings he had in position from his recent surveying, together we agreed on the exact placement of my upcoming fence. I hung screaming yellow Caution tape to define the property line, which sure disturbs the calming woodland aesthetics I’ve been creating for the last 35 years. The next step was the installation of this one section of fencing, knowing full well that it was only the beginning of preserving my garden sanctuary.

This is the view from my neighbors side of the deer fencing which I had installed on our mutual property line. I sure hope the deer notice it.

You can read more articles about my garden on my dedicated Garden Blog: The Garden Artist.

Trimming Hellebores. My First Gardening Task of the Spring

Posted on February 29, 2024 by Mary AhernJune 9, 2025

February Hellebores ready for trimming. Mary Ahern

My Dual Passions – Art and Gardening

Posted on February 5, 2024 by Mary AhernJune 9, 2025

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 just 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.

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.

New Garden Blog Post – The Woodland Garden Reveals

Posted on August 7, 2023 by Mary AhernJune 9, 2025

My idea of the garden I wanted to create around my new home when I bought it in 1989, was a place to immerse myself, not a garden to be admired while sitting on the deck. I had no particular plan that I imagined. Instead, I let the woodland speak to me.

This woodland was filled with poison ivy, invasive vines, thorns and many broken branches and limbs when it called to me. Together for over three decades, it and I have worked to create a woodland garden for meditation. This is the journey.

Garden Blog Post – Overwintering My Summer Tropical Garden

Posted on June 21, 2023 by Mary AhernJune 9, 2025

Overwintering My Summer Tropical Garden is now posted on my garden blog.

I wrote about how I converted my darkroom into a plant room with sinks, counters and LED lighting.. I show a four month sequence of photos from my plant room to the deck where the plants spend their summer vacation.

National Association of Women Artists – Fall 2020 Newsletter

Posted on December 3, 2020 by Mary AhernJune 9, 2025

I am honored to have my painting “Pay Attention Here – Orange Hibiscus” on the cover of the Fall 2020 Newsletter of NAWA, The National Association of Artists. I was juried as a full member into this prestigious historic organization in November of 2018.

NAWA was founded on January 31, 1889 to offer women a greater opportunity as professional artists in a male-dominated art world. From the onset, the annual exhibitions of the women’s Art Club were a great success, attracting the participation of women artists such as Mary Cassatt, Suzanne Valadon, Rosa Bonheur and Cecelia Beaux. As the organization grew, its membership included prominent artists like Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney and Anna Hyatt Huntington.

Many members have taken their rightful place among the recognized artists of their time. Louise Nevelson, Nell Blaine, Alice Neel, Marisol, Judy Chicago, Miriam Schapiro, Janet Fish, Audrey Flack and Faith Ringgold. It is a great honor for me to be afforded such an inspiring brush with history and talent.

Here is a link to the National Association of Women Artists Fall 2020 Newsletter

Pay Attention Here - Orange Hibiscus 36x36" GW Oil on Canvas by the artist, Mary Ahern

Pay Attention Here – Orange Hibiscus 36×36″ GW Oil on Canvas. View this on other oil paintings on my website here.

This is the statement I wrote for the NAWA publication.

For years, I have created floral and garden paintings as the subject of my art. During the last number of years, I’ve focused ever more closely on the centers of flowers as they speak to me more deeply of the reason for their existence. And ours as well.

As a passionate gardener, I am inspired by the gardens I designed and tend surrounding my own studio in Northport. These flowers represent to me a microcosm of the universe. The outsize scale of these individual flower portraits demands attention. They ask questions beyond the canvas.

What is the purpose for such magnificence in nature? What is the reason for such color, such form, such diversity? What is their relationship to the communities in which they belong, their relationships with other plants and species that sustain them, invade them and nourish them? What of their lifecycle of birth, growth, senescence and rebirth? As humans, what can we learn from their seemingly simple existence?

Initially, we see with our eyes. We name the subject, identify it and classify it. But, we also have a duality of vision which allows us to contemplate with an inner vision. This art invites both the external and internal views.

The dual naming of each painting reflects the complex meaning of the work and is an enticement to think more deeply about the subject. This painting, Pay Attention Here – Orange Hibiscus, is at first a call for contemplation of purpose and secondarily, the common name of the flower which enables a more familiar entry into the conversation.

My Art Starts in the Garden

Tag Archives: Garden Writings