Mary Ahern-Left: Floral Park Art League Exhibition -1975 and Right: Ceres Gallery, Chelsea NY Exhibition-2025

For those of us who were told we couldn’t be a Real Artist if we were a woman.

For those of us who were told we couldn’t be an Artist if we were married.

For those of us who were told we couldn’t be an Artist if we were a mother.

For those of us who were told we couldn’t be an Artist if we were divorced.

For those of us who were told we couldn’t be an Artist if we held a full-time job.

For those of us who were single parents, raising kids alone, and still creating Art.

For those of us who were told we couldn’t be a serious Artist if we were a grandmother.

For those of us who took out our paints every day to work on the dining room table after the kids went to bed.

For those of us who worked on plaster casts of our sculptures in the kitchen when the kids were playing underfoot.

For those of us who made crafts to sell at garage sales to make money to buy our fine art supplies.

For those of us who began painting at 10 pm when the workday was over, the dinner was eaten, the dishes done, the homework checked, the baths completed and the kids in bed.

For those of us working to put food on the table but still making our Art in the moments of leftover precious time.

For those of us whose only personal time, in between taking care of others, was while we were making our Art.

For those of us who have always found creative workarounds so we can make our Art.

For those of us who put one foot in front of the other and continued to make Art for over 50 years.

For those of us who listened to our inner Artist and shut out the cacophony of negativity.

For those of us who continue to create to bring our inner strength, our inner thoughts, our inner courage to share with others.

For those of us who didn’t wait for permission to call ourselves Artists—we just kept creating.