My Art Starts In The GardenPosted on by Mary Ahern
Art in the Park
Art, Music, Poetry and Dance Festival
A July summer event, featuring music, dance, poetry and over 30 artists displaying and selling their original work. Art show begins at 10am and festivities begin at 12pm. Free admission and a fun day for the entire family. Hours are 10am to 5pm.
Join us for another exciting event in the picturesque Village of Northport, NY. This multi-disciplinary annual event is held in the Village Park at the foot of main street surrounded by the lush tableau of water, boats, trees, playgrounds and the old time Village feel of another, calmer and genteel era.
My Art Starts In The GardenPosted on by Mary Ahern1
For decades I have been creating art in circles surrounded by squared edges. When I first made this type of work it was in the mid-1970’s. The circle was most often represented by an apple inside a square or cube. At that time it represented to me the yin and yang, female and male complements to our lives and our characters. The apple was an Eve figure, soft, female, curious, playful and seductive. The boxes were the rules, the male, the limitations, the protection and the containment of her attributes.
Apples in Boxes – A pointillist drawing in ink on paper. c1970’s
I have recently returned to this theme but using flowers from my garden as the subjects rather than apples. It feels so calming to me when I create these voluptuous rounded floral paintings. This peony was the first in a series of exploring again the circle in a square imagery so I named it “Centering” because that is how I feel towards these works. I find my centering in two places, in my studio and in my garden. They completely complement each other, one provided by nature and one in interpreting that vision.
There is a difference between the imagery of then and now. These flowers, though they are encompassed in a square format canvas, they are not contained. They are bursting through the limitations of frame, of edges, of inhibition. They are positive and empowered by their form and by their explosive color. They are neither shy nor retiring. They declare themselves as having established their own space. They are declaring themselves as individuals.
The flowers I create in my studio with brush and canvas speak to me beyond their intricacy of form, color, ruffles and swirls. LIke everyone else they initially attract me with the way the color changes as the light graces their outer curves and when it delicately enters their inner recesses, their intimacy. The edges of petals dance like ballerina skirts bouncing in the breeze. Their edges are fluted, scalloped, curved and splayed defining their differences and embracing their similarities of purpose.
I love the architecture of flowers, not just how they grow on their stems, their height, their leaves and their unique outward appearance. I concentrate on the inner architecture of their center parts, the configurations of their pistils and stamens, their anthers laden with pollen. Quite frankly, these flowers are built to seduce their pollinators. The birds and the bees but also the billions of bugs who help by rolling in their pollen to feast and to share and to help create the next generation to grace the earth.
Flowers speak to me of our universe. Our purpose. Our endurance. Each flower is an individual with its own color, shape and form. It’s own choices of community, culture and companionship. It’s own needs for climate, food and water for sustenance. But we all share our need to survive, another season, another year, another generation.
Whether I am among the flowers in my garden or the flowers in my studio, I embrace our diversity and our commonalities. All these flowers in soil or on canvas speak beyond themselves, they’re ideas and thoughts beyond just the visual. They speak to the interior of our purpose and our minds. They are us.
My Art Starts In The GardenPosted on by Mary Ahern
Not until I studied botany and viewed flower structures under magnifying glasses and microscopes did I really appreciate their magnificence. As a life-long gardener I looked at and created landscapes, matching groups of plants to be seen from a distance, blending distant views of overall colors and shapes. Matching seasons and cultivation needs, heights and spreads contributing to the designs I created in gardens and on canvas in my landscape paintings.
A rainbow of colors in a friend’s May garden. Photo by Mary Ahern.
But that aha moment of peering dramatically close to the parts of a flower opened a whole new world of vision and contemplation for me.
By painting my flowers overly large and entirely out of scale from the real world, I try to bring that same sense of awe to my viewers. Show them something of what I see. I try to create for them their own aha moment of joy and wonder to take on their journey.
My Art Starts In The GardenPosted on by Mary Ahern1
My studio was overflowing as I created new work for my show at the Bayard Cutting Arboretum
Mary Ahern brought her award-winning style of floral and garden inspired art to the Bayard Cutting Arboretum from May 17 through June 17, 2018. Three galleries of her floral portraits were on display at the historic Manor House at the Bayard Cutting Arboretum in Great River NY.
Mary Ahern, known for her brilliant floral and garden paintings was showing her latest large-scale flower portraits. As a passionate gardener who is inspired by the gardens she designed and tends surrounding her own studio, these flowers represent to her a microcosm of the universe. The large scale of these individual portraits asks 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 it, 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.
My Art Starts In The GardenPosted on by Mary Ahern
Circles in squares always give me comfort for some reason or another. This particular yellow tulip gave me comfort during the tail end of a winter when I sorely needed color flooding into my eyes.
So what do I find as I’m strolling past the senior buffet at Costco but this glass jar filled with joyously bulging and ready to bloom tulips. They just tossed themselves into my cart and begged to be taken home. And home they came.
As the bursting buds thrust themselves open I knew they needed to continue their job of bringing color and joy to my winter and to my spring, my summer and fall. The thrill of painting flowers is that you get to immortalize them before they disappear into their own winter of lifeless existence.
So many paintings came to mind as I watched the tulips unfurl. But which would be my composition. Closed or open? Silhouette or frontal? One or many? Natural sunshine or artificial light? Solid or textured background? Large or small?
So I played with the tulips. Wallowing in their beauty. They seeped into my soul and brought the winter to an end for me.
Being an Artist allows me to create my own reality, my own season, my own vision of how I view the normal. It brings comfort to my soul.
Costco Tulips dancing in my living room in the winter sunlight.
Being an Artist allows me to create my own reality, my own season, my own vision of how I view the normal. It brings comfort to my soul.
My Art Starts In The GardenPosted on by Mary Ahern1
My Garden. My Muse.
My muse, is my garden. Other gardens as well, but my garden in particular. I move in it, feel it, and hear the breezes whisper through it. I watch the lighting during the day as it slides over and around the textured surfaces.
These Fire Flame Peonies bloom in my garden each year in May at the same time as the color matching azalea.
Lighting so different on days with sun and with clouds. Lighting in the spring with the bright yellow greens of optimistic new growth and lighting by the fall with ambers & tans of a lived life. Morning light offers tender ambiance while afternoon colors not only light the scene from a different direction, the colors are deeper and warmer.
My garden brings consciousness and meaning to me. It keeps me grounded. The ephemeral beauty of an unfertilized blossom studied up close with magnifiers and macro lenses is a representation of a miracle. The world of possibility. The beginning of a story I represent in my Art. I walk through my garden gathering ideas. Stories I want to tell. Suggested ideas I want to convey.
In my garden I spend time designing the landscape or I spend time closely and intimately with a singular specimen at a particular stage of growth. In my studio I may paint a vignette or a full landscape view of a part of the garden I’ve designed, or I may choose to paint a small portion of one flower that has moved me. The minute miracle. This is my work. Outdoors and indoors. These are the stories I tell. This is my Art.
First of all, I have too many girlfriends who have been afflicted by this disease. Neither age nor healthy lifestyle choices seem to have deterred this onslaught.
I am angry and disgusted!
Why these two flowers?
As I traveled to various states doing Fine Arts Festivals over the years, I realized that an unusual number of women were buying these pretty pink flower prints for themselves, their sisters, mothers or girlfriends. During conversations, I began to be aware of how many of my Pink Botanical Prints were being given as gifts to women struggling with Breast Cancer.
I decided to do something about it.
I will donate 20% of the profits from the Sale of either of these two Floral Prints to the Komen foundation to go towards research to help find a cure for this dreaded disease.
When I returned to the Mystic Outdoor Art Festival a year after my previous visit, a customer stopped by my booth to tell me that she had bought a large framed Kansas Peony piece from me the previous year and that she had hung it opposite her bed so it would be the first thing she saw each morning during her challenging year.
I was so moved by this. I was proud to support her in her struggle.
Order either of these prints in whatever size you choose from me directly and I promise to make the appropriate donation to the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation.
Wikipedia Information About The Susan G. Komen Foundation.
The Susan G. Komen Foundation gives so much help and supportive information to women at their most vulnerable time!
Susan G. Komen for the Cure is an organization supporting breast cancer research. Since its inception in 1982, Komen has raised over $1 billion for research, education and health services, making it the largest breast cancer charity in the US. Komen has more than 75,000 volunteers nationwide — 122 affiliates in the United States (47 of 50 states) and 3 in other countries.
Susan Goodman Komen was a woman from Peoria, Illinois who was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 33 and died three years later, in 1980. Komen’s younger sister, Nancy Goodman Brinker, feeling that Susan’s outcome might have been better if patients knew more about cancer and its treatment, and remembering a promise to her sister that she would find a way to speed up breast cancer research, founded The Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation in Komen’s memory in 1982. In 2007, the 25th anniversary of the organization, it changed its name to Susan G. Komen for the Cure, created a new logo, and adopted the explicit mission “to end breast cancer forever”.
In my late summer garden this dramatic combination of colors occurs when the daylillies bloom amongst the rudbeckia. The cultivar name is Frans Hals daylily so how could I not fall in love with it given my Dutch heritage. The rudbeckia is the classic variety named Rudbeckia fulgida and multiplies happily in this garden setting.
I composed this painting in a classical pyramidal style for the daylilies then using the receding rudbeckia to open the space towards the background of trees and shrubs serving as a horizontal and vertical balance.
Frans Hals Daylilies with Rudbeckia 24×36″ Mixed Media on Canvas.
My Art Starts In The GardenPosted on by Mary Ahern
I finally bit the bullet and bought a new car to replace my 1996 Nissan Pathfinder with 200,010 miles on it. I called her my gardening car since I could pack so many plants in her. She also carried my Art to many, many Art Festivals over the years. By giving her up I felt almost the same sense of mourning as I did when I lost 4 trees in my woodland garden to Hurricane Sandy. This car had carried my Art and me safely throughout six states worth of Art Festivals
1996 Nissan Pathfinder pulling my trailer filled with Art to one of many Art Festivals
But it was time. The rust, the rattles, the pervading sense of being stranded somewhere if the trusty ‘ole car decided to bite the bullet. It was very hard to find the right replacement vehicle. I took tape measuring to all the dealerships in search of the perfect match. To my dismay I discovered that all the SUV’s have been pumped up on steroids since I was last in the market. Too many rows of seats and driving around in a McMansion didn’t hold appeal for me.
After much searching I finally choose a RAV4 by Toyota. It fit the dimensions of my large paintings but wasn’t too over sized for day to day driving. So I’ve downsized slightly in order to have a fully flat surface for transporting plants & Art. The back seat is a bench style while most of the larger ones have bucket style seats.
Oh, and I was able to get it in green. Not a color offered very frequently anymore. One of the things that was a big pleasant surprise since I hadn’t had a new car in decades, was all the new technology built into cars nowadays. The new toys helped with the sorrowful transition I felt on abandoning my old friend.
My RAV4 holding an entire Art Exhibition of 32 Paintings.
My Art Starts In The GardenPosted on by Mary Ahern
Artist Mother – Mother Artist One and the same. Complements in name. Work unending, always tending To seek the insights needed to know, to nourish – to form – to grow.
Taken for granted, demands expanded, Desire for life on a higher standard. Creative, depletive, rewarding, absorbing. Continuous rebirth of the most generous kind.
I happily took the Long Island Railroad into Penn Station to then walk to Chelsea in NYC from my perch in Northport Long Island. This venture, on a cold winter day, was to gather in the brilliant colors and environments of the watercolor paintings created by the Artist, Joseph Raffael. These large-scale works envelop you into the tropical gardens and seaside shells which are the models and subjects of his work.
Some feature strongly defined focal points while other subjects are diffused, allowing you to meander through the tangles of flowers, leaves and stems. Koi provide the pivotal “Turning Point” between the water and air while leaving ripples which you know will be gone again in moments. Tibetan prayer flags flutter in the breeze sharing the brilliance of Koi colors. Time, movement and transience are significant subjects in these meditative paintings.
My Art Starts In The GardenPosted on by Mary Ahern
LIVING COLOR – ART EXHIBITION
featuring
“THE WORK OF FOUR EXTRAORDINARY ARTISTS EACH ONE FOCUSING ON THE UNIQUE AND VARIED WAYS THAT COLOR LIVES IN OUR LIVES”
– William Grabowski – Curator
Mary Ahern
Anne Gunthner
Stan Mehlman
Ray Rothaug
On View
March 26 – June 17, 2013 Art-trium Gallery. 25 Melville Park Rd, Melville NY 11747
OPENING RECEPTION
Friday, April 5, 2013. 5:30 – 7:00 pm With music performance by Sally Shorrock and Friends
This Show is Sponsored by the Huntington Arts Council
SOME OF THE MIXED MEDIA PAINTINGS ON VIEW by the Artist, Mary Ahern
“Light Blue Iris in the Garden” I grew these delightful light blue Iris germanica in my garden one year but they sadly haven’t come back with such beauty since. Iris borers and not enough sun perhaps. I solve this ephemeral behavior by painting the flowers from my garden. No pesticides, no fungicides, no weeding, no deadheading. They are in perfect condition all year round.
http://maryahernartist.com/galleries/mixed-media
“Lilies in the Garden” As a gardener and an Artist I’ve been able to combine both of these passions.Though my garden has been featured on various Garden Tours, I guarantee that it doesn’t look as good as the fantasy garden in this painting.
“Siberian Iris Trio” A small patch of these Siberian Irises were in the garden when I bought my home in 1989. They are short lived during the season but very long lived over the years.
“Daylilies and Rudbeckia”
I paired this combination of flowers on my canvas for the their jovial and robust colors. Noticing their form, color and bloom time I transplanted them to create a seasonal vignette in my late summer garden as well.
“Conversation Piece Azalea” These multi-colored flowers all bloom on the same shrub in my garden collection. Another nice thing about this cultivar is that it blooms a bit later than other Azaleas, thereby extended the colorful season.
MY ART BLOG
I wrote an article on my Art Blog recently describing how subconsciously I was influenced by the famous Matisse painting, “The Dance.”
Studying Art History for decades seeps into your creative mind and emerges in ways that you don’t expect. Though I majored in Art in college, it’s the years of continuing pursuit that really make the subtle and not so subtle differences in an Artist’s work.
QUOTATION A garden is a grand teacher. It teaches patience and careful watchfulness; it teaches industry and thrift; above all it teaches entire trust.
MY ARTIST STATEMENT
My Art is driven by the pursuit of multiple passions. In my garden I grow the delicate & ephemeral models which are the subjects of my paintings. I transform them through a complex series of digital technologies and traditional mediums.
I have a degree in horticulture, a degree in Fine Arts and my entire career has been spent in Digital Imaging technologies. These are the tools I use to create my Art.
Creating and reinventing my gardens larger than life size demonstrates the profound importance they play in my own personal centering.
My Art Starts In The GardenPosted on by Mary Ahern
My paintings actually start in my garden. This is where I grow the flowers, shrubs and trees, which are a part of the workflow of my creative output. The sun and shade play a role in all my compositions.
I actually consider the creative work to be seamless whether at work in the garden or at work in my studios. The up close and personal view of the flowers when I’m weeding, deadheading, trimming and tending allow me the time to become intimately aware of each flower’s details. This is something I like to convey in my work.
Light Blue Iris Germanica
These light blue irises came to dance in the breezes in the front garden, which I can see through the French doors in my living room. Though short lived, their ephemeral character is part of the fun of capturing them in my Art.
Phlox stolonifera, ‘Sherwood Purple’ in front of a Karume azalea in the woodland walks.
The composition of this painting was created using elements from different areas of my garden. The woodland walks with their large hemlock trunks for the vertical accents, which mimic the verticals of the irises. The rare spots of sunshine in the front garden, which hold the irises and many other perennial sun lovers, give me many sources of inspiration during the seasons.
My Art Starts In The GardenPosted on by Mary Ahern
Daylilies and Rudbeckia, a Mixed Media painting by the Artist, Mary Ahern.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Mary Ahern Invited To Exhibit Her Art by the Huntington Arts Council
Northport, NY. – February 24, 2013
Mary Ahern, the Northport Garden Artist, has been invited by the Huntington Arts Council to display her Mixed Media paintings in the show titled, “Living Color”. These bold & bright, large-scale paintings are interpretations of the gardens she tends surrounding her studio on Long Island.
Mary Ahern, who has shown her work and been collected extensively on Long Island and many surrounding States, is pleased to have been invited by the Huntington Arts Council to participate in the “Living Color” show. Ahern states, “The title of this show perfectly describes my own large colorful floral portraits. It is a perfect fit.”
The Huntington Arts Council show will be held in the Art-trium in Melville, Long Island, NY. This spacious setting is ideal for Ahern’s large-scale powerful statements.
The show will be held at the Art-rium Gallery at 25 Melville Park Rd., Melville NY. Her Fine Art will be on view from March 26 – June 17, 2013.
Meet the Artist at the opening reception, which will be held on Friday, April 5, 2013 from 5:30-7pm.
I grew these delightful light blue Iris germanica in my garden one year but they sadly haven’t come back with such beauty since. Iris borers and not enough sun perhaps. I solve this ephemeral behavior by painting the flowers from my garden. No pesticides, no fungicides, no weeding, no deadheading. They are in perfect condition all year round.
As a gardener and an Artist I’ve been able to combine both of these passions.Though my garden has been featured on various Garden Tours, I guarantee that it doesn’t look as good as the fantasy garden in this painting.
A small patch of these Siberian Irises were in the garden when I bought my home in 1989. They are short lived during the season but very long lived over the years.
These multi-colored flowers all bloom on the same shrub in my garden collection. Another nice thing about this cultivar is that it blooms a bit later than other Azaleas, thereby extended the colorful season.
