My Art is inspired by the gardens surrounding my studio. There is a complexity to my work in both the spiritual and technical parts of my mind. Enjoy this meandering journey with me. The highs, the lows, inspiration, ideas, techniques and general musings about the complicated creative life of an Artist.
The Christmas Present in 1976 that introduced me to Georgia O’Keeffe
Because I paint large flowers, people naturally say, “Oh, you must like Georgia O’Keeffe.” What they don’t know is that Georgia’s work drew me in not through her flowers but through her abstractions and her skulls. The sensuality of her forms triggered me. I was moved deeply by her lightened color palette. I’d never seen paintings that had that lightness, that buoyancy. They had a girlie-girl feel to them. I didn’t have the language to understand what moved me at the time. I probably still don’t. But her work made me feel like a woman—a soft, light, gentle free spirit.
I was a late starter, going to college at the age of 27. My youngest son was going to preschool, so I had some time to pursue something besides being a mommy that grabbed my soul. I began a YMCA oil painting class, and my teacher, a generous, gifted, and kind French woman, urged me to study in more depth. She saw something in me I didn’t know I had.
On Christmas in 1976, I received a present that changed the course of my life. It was the first coffee-table book published by Georgia O’Keeffe. On the cover was a stunning painting of a skull that changed everything I’d seen in art up to that point. It was gorgeous and inspirational to me.
I would weep at her images in that book. They spoke directly to my soul like no other art had ever spoken to me. In my late twenties, I first realized that paintings didn’t have to be narratives. Showing us how people lived or what they looked like. Art could make you think. Open your mind. Let you seek meaning within yourself. Stir questions that had never occurred to you before. They could open windows of thought into your mind and your very soul.
Flowers in a Glass Vase on a Marble Table by Rachel Ruysch (c. 1704)
I fell in love with Georgia’s white bones. They spoke to me of Life, of Death, of Eternity. In my classrooms with real skulls and at home with my plastic replicas, I took to drawing skulls. The subtle nuances of shading. The openings for eyes. The hollows and crevices. I felt that these skulls spoke to what was underneath our skin. What sturdiness we were made from. What held us together. A hidden part of ourselves. Her bones against the sky spoke to me of the eternity of life. The energy we dissolve into when we are no longer alive. A transition from being alive. The remnants of who we were when we left as a remembrance of sorts. The blue sky shining through those hollow bones. A signal of transition to another plane of existence.
There is another connection I felt with Georgia’s skulls. As the first generation of my family to be born outside of the Netherlands since the 1600s, I have, of course long been attracted to the vanitas paintings of the Dutch painters. Rachel Ruysch was a painter from the late 1600s into the 1700s who specialized in painting intricate and detailed floral bouquets. Because the Dutch were more of a secular nation, their work focused on symbols to express meaning rather than religious subjects, which predominated in other countries. Often, skulls were included in Dutch floral still life paintings, as well as different representations of the fleeting nature of life. Upon close inspection, you will find beetles, ants, and insects nestled amongst the flowers. You’ll discover past-prime deterioration in the petals. These vanitas images reminded the viewers of fragility of life. These are the dark paintings I’d been somewhat aware of until Georgia’s work burst into my sight with sunlight.
Marilyn (Vanitas) by Audrey Flack (1977)
At about the same time Georgia came into my life in the late 1970s, my extraordinary art history professor, Patricia Hills, began introducing us to contemporary women artists working in what would eventually be called the second wave of feminism. The two artists whose work spoke the loudest to me were Judy Chicago with her ground-breaking installation, The Dinner Party. I, along with thousands of other women, made a pilgrimage to see the work at the Brooklyn Museum, where I began to realize that hundreds and thousands of women throughout the world had been written out of history.
The photorealist Audrey Flack announced herself to me loudly with her large, air-brushed, and detailed paintings presented in a lightened palette of colors. This new take on the Baroque vanitas paintings of Ruysch filled me with ideas & expanded my vision in ways I’d never even considered. Her painting, Marilyn (Vanitas) of 1977, riffed on the subjects of transience and mortality. I realized that I was interested in painting ideas rather than painting objects. I wanted to stimulate thoughts, ideas, and conversations as these women had done for me.
I continue to walk boldly in the fading footsteps begun by these women. They showed me the immense courage it would take to keep creating my own vision, in my own way, in my own style. The world didn’t need their art. The world doesn’t need my art. But we need to create it, to put it out there to open the conversations, to spread ideas, to make statements, to provide warnings and to joyously celebrate being alive.
Originally posted in Sanctuary Magazine in March 2025.
That’s a question I’ve heard more than once from people since I turned 70 some years ago. Why would I stop? Like everyone, my life has been a series of zigs and zags, some good, some less so. Life changes and we all adjust one way or another. Changing can be challenging but being flexible to new ideas and ways of doing things can provide a person with unexpected benefits, joys, and experiences.
Looking back on my journey, I realize that the flexibility I developed in navigating life’s obstacles has been a training ground for my future. We all have an outline of our story, and I’d like to share mine.
I got married, had kids, got divorced, went to college, and built a career. I’ve worked for others and then worked for myself. My kids grew up. I remarried, went back to college, changed careers, and changed directions. All that zigzagging presented opportunities for personal growth.
Mary Ahern in the studio working on the oil painting, My New World – Anemone-Redux
So here I am still active, creating my art, gardening, bike riding, traveling, taking classes in various subjects, and embracing the fullness of life. I’m also still actively working on websites, mine and others, publishing content on all my social media channels, writing marketing material for my work and other organizations, showing my artwork in multiple galleries, and giving artist talks to various audiences.
I’ve made changes that have enhanced this stage of my life. Aging happens along with aches and pains, plus other assorted gifts. How does one zigzag around that? How do I keep doing what I love and remain active and engaged despite the challenges?
I made a creative pivot from digital painting back to my original love, oil painting, when my hips began complaining to me that I was sitting too long. My hours and years at the computer spent working on websites, writing, and creating my digital art were affecting the quality of my life. I changed my direction. When I paint in oils, I stand. Standing helped to ease my hip and lower back pain.
Changing my art medium and process also gave me the unexpected benefit of exploring new styles and directions for my art. I began thinking about my art differently, which made the work I was creating look different. The long quiet hours of painting in my studio awakened a dormant passion and deep contemplation, something that didn’t happen when working with the overstimulation of computers. My hip pain offered me the opportunity to free myself and to grow from the experience.
Physical adaptations have also helped. As a lifelong bike rider, the fun decreased with the increasing wrist and neck pain I had on each ride. I found myself making excuses not to join my hubby on the invigorating rides we had always enjoyed together. We were both feeling a sense of loss without trying to burden each other. But then, a solution presented itself in the form of an e-bike. This was another major and very welcome change. Buying my e-bike had me fall in love all over again with riding. I’d missed the breeze on my cheeks, the birds chirping as I rode by, the glimpses of wildflowers along the bike paths, and the fun of sharing the rides with hubby. Once I could ride again, we began taking bike cruise vacations since I could ride the daily 35-mile trips again. We became adventurers together.
Bike riding at Jones Beach, Long Island, NY.
Staying strong and healthy is critical, so I work out at the gym twice a week with a trainer who specializes in functional training. His exercise plan keeps my muscles active and strong, which I need for balance, lifting, bending, and other tasks I do in my everyday life. It’s helped me with my bike riding, gardening, and even more mundane tasks, like food shopping.
I have been able to take advantage of some medical adaptations too. When my eyes became too blurry, I had cataract surgery. When I found myself saying “What?” all day long, I found relief, as did my friends and family, with my new hearing aids. The unexpected bonus was being able to listen to my music and audiobooks through these devices without bothering others around me.
In my garden, I’m downsizing the amount of effort it takes to maintain the landscape I’ve created over the years. I’m planting fewer perennials and more flowering shrubs. I’m also planting more flowers in containers on my deck, which makes it easier for me to care for them. This downsizing allows me to continue to enjoy the garden without enduring the time-consuming and exhausting work of upkeep.
For safety issues, I’ve stopped climbing ladders to rehang the artwork in my studio as it comes and goes from and to art exhibitions. I have learned to ask my grown grandson to help me. He works for bacon and eggs on bagels, and we both get to enjoy each other’s company.
Investing in myself is critical to me, so I also invest in my passion for lifelong learning. This year, I’ve been working with AI to learn how to use it efficiently. I’ve also been taking a course on “strategy” since having a strategy can be applied to so many actions. It has helped me realize that my zigzag life, navigating everything that has come my way, has been a deliberate strategy for how I’ve lived life fully.
The detours, downsizing, and accommodations I’m currently making aren’t negatives at all; they are my strategies for aging gracefully. In fact, they are helping me to grow and continue doing the things I enjoy. I believe that this mindset is the framework for living as full a life as possible at any stage of our lives.
Published initially in Sanctuary Magazine. November 2024
Revised 9/5/2025
A Love of Reading from the Start
Mary Swart Reading The Poky Little Puppy (1953)
I’m in my 70s and very excited since I’m back at school and taking a new class. We are so lucky now that there are many ways to continue learning. We can take classes in traditional in-person settings, take online workshops, or pursue a hybrid balance. What a gift!
My pursuit of knowledge has always been eclectic. I study what I want, when I want or need it, to enhance the projects I’m working on. Not one to seek the traditional BA, MA, or PhD stepping stones, I followed the song made famous by Frank Sinatra, I did it “My Way.”
Mary Swart, McKinley Junior High School, 1962. Front row 5th from left.
One of the constants in my life is that I’m always studying something. A deep and wide curiosity leads me to focus on personal growth and practical knowledge — from Maharishi to computer programming and everything in between.
Starting college when my youngest entered pre-school gave me a late start to higher education. Once I entered the college classrooms, I experienced a surge of intensity for learning that has never diminished. In those earlier years, my studies were in traditional settings filled with students far younger than I was. It was fun to ruin the curve.
Online classes, initially offered by Lynda.com (now LinkedIn Learning), are how I studied in the mid-1990s as I balanced a full-time career while single-handedly raising my sons. These courses are brilliant orchestrations of various learning styles. This online coursework, consisting of 2-4 minute videos and written transcripts, runs the gamut of creative design, business, technology, and beyond. The subject offerings are now vastly more than in my original traditional classroom college settings.
Screenshot of one of the online Seth Godin & Bernadette Jiwa Akimbo courses I took with other students around the world.
It’s a great way to meet others who are interested in the same things as you.
On-site courses offer many benefits that I would not have had from in online settings.
My garden has been the inspiration behind my art for decades but formally studying horticulture introduced me to an entirely new understanding of the garden. Studying the science behind this living environment at my doorstep, was and continues to be a source of endless investigation. Not just in the beauty a garden can project, but in the sustainability, the interaction, and reliability of the vast array of life forms involved in creating a mutually dependent whole. Because of this deep study of my garden, my art has changed. As I’ve grown in an awareness of the complexity of the garden that I’ve designed and tended for over 35 years, my art has changed too by becoming more expressive, less realistic, and more multilayered.
I first became aware of how I was being transformed, not just by having more technical knowledge through my studies in horticulture when one day, standing in my garden, my clothes and hands covered in dirt, scratched and bug bitten, a wave of quiet contentment entered my very being. Yes, I was exhausted, and my body was aching from the hours of hard physical labor, but something different was flowing through my mind. It was a sense of awakening. I felt it but I was not able to articulate clearly what I felt. I still don’t have the words completely to express this transformation. So, I have been trying to do so through my art.
Working in my studio on the Phaelanopsis Orchid (December 2020)
Spending years since then of work both in my mind and physically, I have dug deeper into the metaphor the garden has represented to me about all living beings. It has taught me that in order to survive, the building of communities is needed to create a harmonic, healthy balance. The garden speaks to me of survival. I watch hummingbirds, with their long beaks, attracted to the long tubular flowers of the Salvias. I smell the late day fragrance of the Brugmansia as it seduces night pollinators less exhausted from a day’s work to help the lifecycle. Each insect, each flower, each fungus is only trying to survive for another season, another year, another generation. We as humans, like the complexities found in the garden are also trying to survive and hopefully prosper.
In my studio, my large, centrally focused flower paintings have been inspired by the imagery I saw through the microscopes used during my scientific studies in horticulture. The bold colors and large sized paintings were my way of grabbing the attention of the viewer just as the stunning presentation of a bold peony blossom calls out for attention.
Phaelanopsis Orchid (A Work in Progress, December 2020)
© Mary Ahern
Over time the education I am receiving from the garden has been changing me. My artwork Is reflecting my deepening thoughts, abstract concepts, and my openness to explore new ideas and deeper theories of the world surrounding us.
During Covid, another revelation presented itself to me. I began to look at the imagery posted online by NASA showing us the galaxy of which we are but a small part. I realized that the entire universe also depended upon that harmony and balance all of us, the garden included, must have in order to exist. This awareness of the delicacy of both the microcosm and the macrocosm of our worlds is what I am now trying to express in my artwork. Blending abstractions inspired by the cosmos transparently through the realistic flowers grown in my garden informs the current work in my studio.
The awareness of the multi-layered reliance on other forces to help in survival is humbling. This new awareness has deepened my gratitude. This is what I am now attempting to create in my studio.
Cosmic Phaelanopsis
Oil ~ 24 x 24 inches. Deep Cradled Hardboard. Available on the website here.
© Mary Ahern
Note: “Cosmic Phaelanopsis” is the final work after I put the piece aside for two years due to being dissatisfied with its direction. The final “Cosmic Phaelanopsis” is an example of the new direction my work has taken.
Partial Artist Statement:
This artwork sparks a vital conversation reflecting the interconnectedness and balance within the microcosm of my garden and the macrocosm of the cosmos. My work draws inspiration from the life cycle of flowers to explore existential questions about existence, purpose, fragility, and interconnectedness.
There were women who stepped into my life’s journey that changed the course of my life at critical junctures that I only realized in hindsight. I was raised in a very conventional household by strict European parents with very defined roles. By twenty years of age, I’d come to the pinnacle of my success with my prince charming of a hubby, a baby, and our own home. What a relief! I had it all. The American dream. Contentment personified.
Mary (L) and Roberta ~ 1977 Photo Courtesy: Mary Ahern
Until my beloved hubby rocked our little world by wanting out of our paradise. I had no life preparation beyond anything except the happy home, two sons, a dog, and a white picket fence. I didn’t know any woman who worked, let alone was raising their children by herself. I honestly imagined my sons, and I would starve to death without a man to work and earn the money to use in the supermarket. The windows in our home became a prison to me, keeping us silently and painfully apart from the world. My dark hopelessness led me on frightening trails of despair and death.
The emergency slowly passed. Life settled down a bit. But I was changed forever. I knew I needed to control the outcome of life for my sons and me. Then, I met Roberta at the YMCA Swim and Gym classes for our three-year-olds. She was a biology professor at Queen College and showed me I could get educated. Because of her, I went to college, got my degree in fine arts, and then got my divorce on my terms.
With confidence and a goal, I got a job at Barnard College, the women’s college of Columbia University, a bastion of feminism—an entirely new world of supportive women who opened up a vast world for me. Martha hired me as the office manager since, as she said, any single mother knows how to balance time and tasks. Since classes were free for employees, I studied programming in the School of Engineering, and Martha encouraged me to get into the then nascent field of computers. She also said to follow where a company makes its money, so I should go into sales or finance for my career. I took her advice.
Mary’s Office Just After Starting Her Own Business, Online Design (1995)
Photo Courtesy: Mary Ahern
Mary Ann had a Datsun 280 sports car, wore gold jewelry, and owned expensive houses. She showed me women on their own can be wealthy. I determined that if I couldn’t be home at 3 o’clock with the milk and cookies, I would make the most money I possibly could. She showed me it was possible.
I went into the sales field in the male-dominated computer graphics industry since there I would earn money based upon my own efforts while combining my art, graphics, and computer backgrounds. And I did. Until I hit my head on the glass ceiling. So, I started my own graphic design/marketing business.
As an entrepreneur, I controlled how I used my time, benefited financially from my own skills and efforts, chose the types of work that intrigued me and created and designed my own lifestyle.
And now is my time in my journey; I get to pay it forward. Using the models, the women before so wisely gave me, I am able to generously offer my experience to other women. Being an active member of the National Association of Women Artists (NAWA), I am in a position to share my business experience in sales and marketing with many other women to help them move along in their own journeys. Like having a delicious piece of apple pie with a scoop of ice cream and a cherry on top at the end of an exquisite meal, I’m finally having my dessert.
NAWA has been empowering women artists for 135 years as the first women’s professional art organization founded in the US. Like the women who helped me in my life’s journey, I’m comforted by knowing I’m also helping other women in theirs. As Isaac Newton said: “…if I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.”
My life is filled with gratitude for what I have experienced and learned throughout my life, and that I now have an opportunity to share with other women in my community of professional women artists. Life is sweet!
National Association of Women Artists (NAWA) 2023 New Member Induction Ceremony
Mary (Bottom Row, 4th from Right)
Photo Courtesy: Mary Ahern. Chair of Public Relations Committee
Originally published in Sanctuary Magazine March 2024
Photo of Judy Chicago by Donald Woodman
A short while ago I had a virtual visitor enter my studio while I was standing at my easel working on an oil painting. The visitor was Judy Chicago who was interviewed for the 60-year retrospective of her work at the New Museum in New York. Out of the corner of my eye, as I continued to paint, I watched and listened to the live-streaming event for the exhibition “Herstory” (here’s the YouTube Video of the event) which was the first comprehensive museum survey of her work. Judy Chicago was born in 1939 and as I listened to this interview it was 2023. Eighty-four years is a long, long time to wait to have this type of recognition.
This juxtaposition of Judy being live-streamed into my studio as I painted was profound for me since Judy’s work and those of many other women artists whom I was fortunate enough to be made aware of during the 1970’s when I was majoring in art in college, are why I’m still creating my work. These women artists weren’t in my textbooks. They were instead presented to me by some of the women art historians and women professors I studied with when I was lucky enough to attend classes at the then, tuition-free, City University of NY. All these women changed my life. The women artists were showing a new way of working and the professors were exposing us to a reevaluation of the art historical canon.
I first saw Judy’s work in 1979 as thousands of us made a pilgrimage to the Brooklyn Museum of Art to view The Dinner Party. This groundbreaking installation was created with Judy’s vision and also the efforts of hundreds of women offering their skills in various mediums. This work helped to introduce fabrics, embroidery, stitching, ceramics and various other techniques which had been ungraciously removed from the category of “Fine Art” by those who were in charge of writing the history of art. These creative skills were those exercised primarily by women and now were finally being presented in museums.
Photo collage by Mary Ahern
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. Continue reading →
At the age of 14, I was alone and lying in the summer grass on a hill in Brooklyn, New York, staring upward through the leaves at the passing clouds while trying to understand why a person I loved dearly had suddenly died. Without an anchor or language to explain the passage, I was at a profound loss and searching for an answer, an explanation. I clearly remember feeling the warm energy from the ground swell up and pass through my body and like a mist, mingle into the leaves and up into the clouds in that deeply blue sky.
At that moment, I recognized that I, as a person, was another aspect of nature, joined with the wind, the air, the plants, the trees, and all life teeming around me – just another form of energy. This gift has been with me throughout my life and is what I gather in my garden and express in my art.
1985 – Mary Ahern in the Cablevision studio working with the Chameleon electronic paint system.
Painting in my studio. The white iris blooms in my garden each spring. I glaze with thin washes using a fan brush and thinned paints.
My Zig-Zag Journey
Like most of us, our life journey takes many paths. For me, my twists and turns led me to a career that blended my fine arts training with my technical background. As a single parent with two hungry sons, I found a way to keep one foot in the arts by selling computer graphics equipment into the broadcast television industry. Creating graphics and fine art using the computer as my medium enabled me to have the financial stability I needed to live the life I envisioned for myself and my family.
Learning is a lifetime passion for me. Within the classroom, I have formal degrees and certifications in fine art, horticulture, botanical illustration, logic and computer programming. To this day, I continue to take online and offline workshops in marketing, writing, and various artistic mediums and genres.
Throughout my work career, I always maintained my studio art practice since it is the root of all that I do and who I am as a human being. At the present time, I have the good fortune of continuing to work independently without needing clients, creating my artwork, showing it extensively in exhibitions, and lecturing on art.
Entrance to my woodland garden. Throughout my garden there are round things to be walked through, around and over.
I am not just an artist. I am a horticulturist on a mission to transform my surroundings. Continue reading →
Some of my Audrey Flack books.
Audrey Flack is a painter who, when I was in college in the 1970s, inspired me as I began my artistic journey. My art history teacher Patricia Hills at York College, which is part of the City University of New York (CUNY) system, introduced us to the many women artists who were pushing the envelope at the time. There was Audrey Flack, Joyce Kozloff and Judy Chicago. All of these women are currently Honorary Vice Presidents of the National Association of Women Artists. Since at the moment, I am Chair of the Public Relations Committee of NAWA it is such an honor to be meeting these artists who are still teaching us to keep working, keep pushing, and keep making our own artistic statements.
Roz Dimon, Audrey Flack, Mary Ahern, Susan Rostan at the Southampton Arts Center, November 2023 Photo credit: James F Dawson
Recently I went with hubby Dave and my friends Susan Rostan & hubby Bob to the “Heroines of Abstract Expressionism” at the Southampton Arts Center here on Long Island. Audrey had work in the show but so did a few other artists who had been members of NAWA, including Nell Blaine, Dorothy Dehner, and Buffie Johnson.
Since Susan and I are co-hosting the Historical Research Team at NAWA this was an auspicious occasion for us and opened up new opportunities for research and writing.
Audrey Flack at the Southampton Arts Center, November 2023 Photo credit: James F Dawson
Then another amazing event happened, Audrey Flack was scheduled for a talk at Southampton two weeks later, so we signed up and took another drive out east. It sure was worth it! Continue reading →
In 1973, fifty years ago I began my artist’s journey. Since I’d majored in music during my Junior and Senior High School days, playing the trumpet and conducting, I hadn’t taken any art classes. It wasn’t until my youngest son went to pre-school that I began stretching my wings.
My first step towards discovering that my life’s work would be an artistic journey was buying a Jon Gnagy, Learn to Draw set and experiencing a sensation that the charcoal was an extension of my hand, my arm and my body. It was thrilling!
After completing his entire set of drawing lessons, I decided to take painting classes at the local YMCA where I lived at the time in Queens, NY. So, I arranged for a babysitter, signed up for the oil painting class and made my first foray into Jerry’s Artarama art supply store with my supply shopping list in hand. How electrifying to be exposed to so many wonderful and exciting new products, widgets, thingies, colors, brushes, papers and canvas. Oh, the possibilities!
Still Life with Peaches, my second oil painting which was completed in 1973
Along with the small tubes of Grumbachers, some brushes, canvas boards and mediums, we were instructed to bring some pictures from calendars or notecards that we could use to copy. My first calendar photo was of a brilliant orange sunset with the silhouette of a house at the bottom. I still have these early paintings, some on walls, some tucked away.
The second oil painting I ever did I copied from a placemat that I had borrowed from a neighbor.
I so loved the image, not knowing at the time that it was representative of the golden age of Dutch still life painting from the 1600s. I had no formal knowledge of art history but, being Dutch, and having spent time in Holland as a child I had been exposed to the art hanging in the homes of my extended family. That still-life image spoke to me in a way I didn’t understand at the time. It spoke to me of family, of my history, of roots, of connection. It is also part of my art journey, not just another painting but the beginning of a 50-year adventure with all the ups and downs, zigs and zags. An adventure that, I’m happy to say is still unfolding!
This is my studio wall from some years ago with artwork covering a piece from many decades. Some are now in storage, some have moved to different walls. All of them speak to me of my life and artistic journey of these exciting 50 years of creativity.
One of my studio walls in 2019 with work from before college, during college and after college. Various mediums from oils to pastels to needlework to watercolor.
