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Tag Archives: Flowers

Why I Paint. Why I Write. The Garden Tells Me To.

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Long ago in the way back machine, I grew some sunflowers for my young sons. You know which ones, they’re the 8-foot tall ones that excite every kid. So on the day the flower was pitch-perfect, I pulled out my pastels and tried to capture its roundness, its color. And then it was time to light the barbecue and make dinner for the boys so I put away my pastels and paper while planning to finish the work the next day.

We enjoyed our burgers outside in the garden under the towering sunflowers that evening sitting at the picnic table with the soft summer breezes and called it a day. The next morning when I gathered my chalks and half worked drawing to complete the art don’t I discover that a squirrel had beaten me to the day’s work. The center seeds were chomped and mangled. This was my clarion call to the ephemeral.

I learned that day the garden doesn’t wait. The passing of time can be in a split minute. A flower has another calling and it’s not willing to wait for me until I’m ready. It, like me, has a busy life with other goals.

First Sunflower Pastel Art by the artist, Mary Ahern

These are some of my earliest paintings hanging on the wall in my studio. The Sunflower pastel is a reminder of the ephemeral garden.

So I committed myself to capture the transient moments in my garden. The inspirations in form and color. The visions and details that escape us as we hurry through and around in our busy lives. The moments that don’t wait for us.

And then I realized that my garden not only shows me its secrets, it also tells me its mysteries. It whispers ideas into my head. But those ideas are also fleeting. They come to me but fly away on the breezes too quickly for me to grab. So I’ve begun writing. Each time the garden sends a story I write a note of it down. I capture it on my keyboard or quickly with a pencil. At times I even have to catch it so quickly when I’m immersed in the midst of my garden that I can’t run indoors quickly enough before I lose it so I speak it softly into my phone. I’m building a library of stories the garden is generously sharing with me. This is one of them.

 

Sunflowers With Purple Asters-Artwork by the artist, Mary Ahern

Sunflowers With Purple Asters. Prints of this artwork are available in various sizes on canvas, fine art paper, acrylic and metal in my online Art Shop.

 

 

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I Collect Round Things

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Since the 1970’s I’ve been a collector, an observer and a thinker about round things. Currently, my garden is enhanced by round thing presences. Spheres of all colors and sizes. Sculpture with round themes. Round trellises. Round gateways.

Woodland Entrance

This moon gate entry to my woodland walkways is just one of the pieces throughout my garden which inspires my art.
These themes of roundness have threaded throughout my work for decades.

On my deck are round finials on the tops of the banisters. And large round concrete containers spewing forth their colorful floral additions all summer.

I have reflective spheres so as you walk around the circular pathways in my garden you see yourself in a distorted and accentuated way. It’s good to see yourself when you least expect it. Then your mind views you more clearly. It sees how others may see you.

Why round things you ask? They are the feminine. The woman. The beginning. The Eve.

They are the mystery. No beginning and no end. The continuum.

Eve’s apple is the first sphere. It represents to me the essence of woman, the feeding, the nurturing, the sexuality, the sensuousness, the rounded birth belly.

With the apple Eve burst forth from the confinement of the “Garden of Eden”. The place made for her. To protect her but also to isolate her from life. The experiences. The experimentation. The adventure.

She broke free by pushing the boundaries. By saying that the world created for her was not enough. She found her way to burst forth and experience life. The sadness, the pain, the anguish, the tears, the disappointments, dashed dreams, hopes denied, the loss of loved ones, the curse of immortality.

Without which true happiness, peace and contentment could not be embraced.

My art is embedded with these meditations on life.

Omni Gallery Show with Visitor with the paintings of the artist, Mary Ahern

The OMNI Gallery show featured my round flower inspired oil paintings. This work is embedded with meditations.

 

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Studio Glimpses Video-The Process of Creating the Painting: “Here I Am – Candy Wind Hibiscus”

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In my continuing series of Studio Glimpses, I love to respond to questions by my collectors. The process of how I created this painting is generally one of those most frequently asked.

You Tube Video link: (https://youtu.be/pgVtTmQX944)

In this video, I begin by showing you the photo of a flowering hibiscus from my own garden which was the inspiration for this artwork.
Here I write my thought process behind the stages visualized in the video. 

In my initial stage I work out the composition of the final art work and deciding whether it will be a square or a rectangle.

To work out the details of lights and darks that will be in the final painting I like to start with a tonal drawing. Using an HB weight graphite pencil I use my customary swirling strokes to give form to the drawing. Not being partial to outlines I don’t emphasize them but soften the edges by merging them slightly with strokes. 

In order to transfer the drawing to the canvas I used a mapped grid system. In this case, I put a transparent sheet of paper over the tonal drawing on which I’ve drawn a grid. After measuring the same grid on the canvas I was able to upsize the drawing onto the canvas. Using pastels I created an underdrawing of a neutral ochre color using the tonal drawing as my model, followed by a layer of neutral ochre oil paint which seals the surface of the gessoed canvas.

In the next stage, I applied thin coats of oil paints in layers recreating the original composition in the base colors allowing the underpainting to peak through. Many, many layers of thin glazes are applied to give dimension and form to the final painting.

Details are added during the later stages, I think of it as putting jewelry on after you get dressed to go to a party. You save the best for last.

Each day after if finish working on a painting in my studio I photograph it for reference and view the images on my computer to see the progress and decide if I want to make any changes along the way.

I prefer to work on thick gallery wrapped canvas and finish the work off with neutral floating frames. I aim for simplicity in form with exuberance and abundance in surface color. This painting has no visible brushstrokes which is also my preferred style of painting.

Mary Ahern-Original Fine Art and Prints

“Here I Am – Candy Wind Hibiscus” 20×20″ GW oil painting on canvas. $1,950.00.
Check here to see if this painting is still available for purchase

I’m glad you came here so I can share my art with you.

Each person brings their own history, interpretation and emotion to a work of art.

My art isn’t complete without you. Thank you for being here. I love being an Artist!

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Slide Slam-Patchogue Arts Council Presentation by Mary Ahern

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Recently I had the honor to present my art and the meaning behind my thought process at Slide Slam. This event was sponsored by the Patchogue Arts Council and hosted by the Haven Gallery in Northport NY.

The presentation by the 20 selected Long Island artists was to display a slideshow of 15 images and speak for exactly 5 minutes each about the work. Such a daunting task proved to be an interesting challenge. How do you get to the essence of your work succinctly in such a short span of time?

With plenty of planning!

After the event, I created a video of my Slide Slam talk which you can see here.

Important for me was to convey how critical the garden is to my work. It is in fact the beginning of my creative workflow. In the garden I feel the power of the interconnectedness of all that surrounds me; the necessary ecological balance of the earth, climate, water and nutrients, that sustain the cycle of life.

The communities of birds, bees, insects and yes, humans to pollinate flowers with the assistance of the wind of course. This cooperation is the main critical component of maintaining not just my garden but our entire life here on earth as we know it. Without fertilization the cycle of life would die for all living things, not just for the loss of our beautiful garden flowers but for all our food sources as well.

To me, the garden is just a microcosm of the universe.

The vast beauty of color, fragrance and the architecture of each plant is created to seduce assistance in procreation. Each flower has evolved its own method for attracting exactly the pollinator they desire. Long tubes for hummingbirds, open centers for nice fat bumble bees. Certain colors are more visible to different insects than others. Fragrance signals an invitation to specific species that the time is right for fertilization. The Brugmansia is most fragrant in the late afternoon since it would rather have an energetic pollinator just arriving on their evening shift than a tired one at the end of it’s working day.

Working in and studying my own garden for the last 30 years has given me the unique opportunity to watch dynamic change occur. When my oak trees fell in Hurricane Sandy suddenly the types of plants that enjoyed their shade began to suffer from too much sun. I dug them up and moved them and their scorched leaves to where they would be more comfortable and replaced them with flowers that thrive in the drenching sun. Over time this would have happened naturally but I was able to speed up the process.

Each day in my garden I’m inspired by the energy of life. I carry this with me right into my studio where I allow that energy to inform my art.

 

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Enjoy Metal Weather Resistant Aluminum Art Outdoors Year Round

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Tired of the browns and grays and whites of winter? So am I!

I’m looking to get a jump on some brilliant color outside. I want to see color outside my windows, outside in my garden and outside on my deck. I’ll bet you are too.

Bright splashes of color greet me when the trees are bare and the shrubs covered with white snow. It is so cheery to see in the dead of winter. Seeing color reduces my stress. It probably does for you too. That’s why gardens are so relaxing.

ChromaLuxe exterior grade aluminum metal prints hanging in the garden all winter in the snow. Mary Ahern Artist

ChromaLuxe exterior aluminum prints hang outside in my garden all year long popping color when I most need it.

During the spring and summer, I coordinate the color of my plantings with the colors in my art. It gives me a very creative palette of colors to work with. It adds to the fun of gardening.

I hang my aluminum art on the garage so I can see flowers all year from the windows in my home, I hang the art on my deck where we entertain and select art that color coordinates with my outdoor furniture. As a garden designer, I’ve designed woodland walks around my home and studio and even hang art on the trees for when people wander around on my garden tours.

I tried a lot of products outdoors in my own garden on Long Island in New York where we get snow and ice in the winter and lots of heat in the summer. I found that not all aluminum is created equal since much of it warped in the extreme temperatures. Then I tried the ChromaLuxe brand of exterior grade aluminum. I’ve tested these prints throughout all the seasons and they have flourished in my garden for years.

In my video, you can see some of the ways I’ve displayed my art in the garden and also the gardens of some of my happy customers. Take a look and be inspired.

Click here for the video.

Then have some fun. On my website I’ve introduced a separate category for the indoor/outdoor metal aluminum art with an augmented reality feature. Now you walk around your space with your mobile device and see how my art will look in your own setting. You can also try different sizes to see what will fit perfectly for you.

Seeing this live takes the stress out of deciding what artworks for you. It is the ultimate in customizing your own living spaces both indoor or out. Try it now. No commitment to purchase is needed to see for yourself. Go to my online shop, click on the metal print category, select an image that intrigues you, change the size, try a different print, try a different space. Enjoy yourself now!

Go to the Metal Print Shop section in my Art Shop and try the Augmented Reality for yourself in your own home or garden!

 

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Studio Glimpses – The Making of the Pink Peony Painting

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All of my paintings start with the garden, mine or other gardens. On a trip one spring day in May as I wandered around the peony displays at the New York Botanical Garden, with my phone I took snapshots of many of the unbelievable peonies in their collection in full bloom.

Later that year on a cold winter day in December, sifting through my stash of photos, a particular pink peony image jumped out at me and demanded my attention. I knew we could develop a relationship together. It often takes months to complete a painting so I really have to love my subjects in order to spend that much time with them. We need to love each other.

Once deciding on the size of the canvas I want to use I sketch, using vine charcoal, to give the general outline of the final layout onto canvas prepped with multiple layers of gesso. Then I block in the areas of color, working on my lights and darks. Then I paint using many layers of thin glazing in order to get the vibrancy of color I crave.

Oil paints need a few days of drying times between layers and some of my paintings have 15 to 30 layers of glazing. In order to continue painting every day, I usually work on multiple paintings at a time. Each one a different day. A different palette of colors. A different stage of completion. I like the continuous challenge of picking up where I left off. I keep extensive notes at the end of each day for each painting. A sort of diary of each work.

I paint quite slowly and quite neatly. I don’t like to feel sticky so I’m cleaning brushes and washing my hands constantly. Gloves don’t work for me since I don’t like the barrier they put between my brush and my hand. Rolls of paper towels help with the tidiness of my style of workflow. In fact & have two different brands for two different uses.

I listen to music while I paint. During the duration of this particular painting, I was listening to many CDs of van Morrison music. I don’t know why. I just was. Sometimes I’m in a classic rock groove for weeks on end and other times might be jazz, classical or even new wave relaxation. I don’t plan it. It just happens.

I usually paint with just brushes, fan brushes in fact, but the center of this painting demanded a palette knife. It’s not something I usually turn to but since the painting had a mind of its own I complied. Glad I did since the center of this painting is rich with texture while the petals are completely without texture but rich in nuance.

I named this painting Centering – Pink Peony. The reason is that it represents two different views for me. I can see with my eyes that it’s an interpretation of a pink peony but in my soul I found it centered me. Made me contemplate the meaning of this painting, this flower, this world it had lived in and now lives in again but in a different way. One ephemeral, one eternal.

 

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Apples in Boxes – Flowers in Squares – New Paintings on an Old Theme by Mary Ahern

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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.

Apple in Boxes Pointilist drawing by Mary Ahern the Artist

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.

Centering - Pink Peony Squared. Original oil painting by Mary Ahern the artist.

“Centering – Pink Peony” 36×36″ GW. Oil on Canvas. Original painting by Mary Ahern. To purchase or for additional information please contact the artist here.

 

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Not Just Another Flower Painting

The Cosmic Garden Artist Posted on by  
My Painting Studio. Mary Ahern Artist.

Paintings in progress in my studio. Visit my Art Shop.

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 Garden with rhododendrons and hyacinths

A spring view in my garden makes my heart sing. Visit my Art Shop.

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Why Bigger Flowers Are Better

The Cosmic Garden Artist Posted on by  

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.

Tulips in a May Garden. Mary Ahern the Aritst

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.

Yellow Tulip Squared

Yellow Tulip Squared. Various size prints available on canvas, fine art paper, metal and acrylic in my online shop.

 

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Preview Your Art on Location Before You Buy

The Cosmic Garden Artist Posted on by  

Ever wonder what size Art will work in your ideal location? Will the colors of the Art complement your display area?

What treatment do I want for my Art?

  • Canvas that is gallery wrapped or framed?
  • Fine Art Paper with matting and framing?
  • Art on metal or acrylic for a new and contemporary look?

You can test all of these options in my online Art Shop.

Say you found a piece of Art that you’d like to buy but don’t know what size or whether it will work colorwise in your location.

White Peony Squared. Wall art by Mary Ahern

White Peony Squared. Prints available in a variety of sizes on canvas, fine art paper, metal or acrylic.

 

My Art Shop is filled with features which will help you to imagine exactly how your new Art will look in your own space. The ultimate in customizing!

The Wall Preview Button on the page of the Art you selected allows you to:

  • See what your painting will look like on the wall in a variety of room settings.
  • View the size and match your own wall color.

ASF art wall preview. Wall art by Mary AhernTo make a purchase select the Art that makes your heart sing. Then you can:

  • Select the medium of your choice: Canvas, Fine Art Paper, Acrylic or Metal.
  • Next, you select the size of your Art.
  • Based on the medium you’ve chosen you will be able to choose options such as framing or matting.
  • Now you can either add your Art to the Shopping Cart or save it to your Favorites right there in the Shop.

 

Other nifty features:

  • Examine the texture and details of a painting using the ZOOM tool.
  • Email your favorite painting to a friend for their opinion.
  • Your purchase is a safe and secure checkout using PayPal or your credit card.

Who has time to waste trying to figure out new menus?

I like diagrams. Don’t you? Here is a diagram that will show you the many different treatment options available to you for each Art Work in my Shop
ASF art shop instructions

Choose from the hundreds of sizes and treatments of my Flower and Garden Art.
This is the ultimate in customization for you to use when designing for your home or office.

 Now you can visit my Art Shop and try these features on any of the hundreds of sizes and treatment variations available to you for your home or office! Have fun!

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Yellow Tulip Squared – The Inspiration Behind a Painting

The Cosmic Garden Artist Posted on by  

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.

Yellow Tulip Squared

Yellow Tulip Squared © Mary Ahern. Prints available in various sizes on canvas, fine art paper, metal and acrylic in my Art Shop.

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.

Wall Art - Yellow Tulips by the Artist, Mary Ahern

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.

 

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Frans Hals Daylilies With Rudbeckia

The Cosmic Garden Artist

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

Frans Hals Daylilies with Rudbeckia 24×36″ Mixed Media on Canvas.

Contact the Artist, Mary Ahern for questions regarding the availability of this painting.

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Joseph Raffael at the Nancy Hoffman Gallery – Video of the 2013 Show

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.

Here is a short video I made from this Joseph Raffael Show.

The Nancy Hoffman Gallery  520 West 27th St. New York City.

 March 21-May 4, 2013

 

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The Composition of the Matisse Painting of The Dance Influenced my Blue Iris Painting

The Cosmic Garden Artist Posted on by  

Studying Art History seeps into your memory. Countless visits to the many museums and galleries that New York City has to offer has crept into my subconscious. This lifelong study has taken me through so many happy surprises as well as quite a number of dead ends.

Often Artists are asked who their influences have been for their Art style. Trust me,  never would I have answered Matisse. I’ve never appreciated his sketchy use of paint, his lack of detail and apparent lack of a “finished” quality to his work.

And then, when I least expected it, I reimagined Matisse’s iconic painting, “The Dance”.  Using flowers from my own garden, I picked up the exuberant rhythm that makes his work such a delight. This work is so light, buoyant and a wonderful interpretation of what spring means to me.

As I was creating the composition of Irises I remember somewhere, behind my eyes, trying to make the circular floating connections of the frilly irises that was suspended somewhere in my memory. I have stood so often in front of the Matisse painting at the Museum of Modern Art, loving the composition while not liking the paint quality. I’ve returned so often to view that painting in the original hoping to find what I missed.

I absorbed his painting just by being there and looking. And looking again. And again…Mary Ahern Artist and Henri Matisse Painting Composition

“…man is a bundle of relations, a knot of roots,
whose flower and fruitage is the world…”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Mary Ahern Artist - Mixed Media Painting - Light Blue Iris in the Garden

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Light Blue Iris in the Garden – Painting Inspiration

The Cosmic Garden Artist Posted on by  

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.

Mary Ahern Artist. Light Blue Iris Germanica

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.

Mary Ahern Artist. Phlox stolonifera, 'Sherwood Purple' and Karume azalea in the woodland walks.

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.

Light Blue Iris in the Garden. Mixed Media Painting. 30x40" Gallery Wrapped. © Mary Ahern.

Light Blue Iris in the Garden. Mixed Media Painting. 30×40″ Gallery Wrapped. © Mary Ahern.

The finished painting is called “Light Blue Iris in the Garden”. I’m not very original on names but it is an apt description.

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