Tag Archives: Influences

Changing My Mind About Genre and Purpose in my Art

My Art Starts In The Garden Posted on by 2

Over the last few years, my art has shifted away from painting what I think will be popular. Selling lots of prints, in lots of sizes both online and offline, I knew I could make piles of money in my sleep. What fun!

That thinking is no longer my goal for making my art. Don’t get me wrong, I love selling, it’s in my blood. It was my career for many years. But times have changed for me. Circumstances have changed too. I’ve stepped out of the rat race. Out of the business world strictly speaking.

I stopped painting for cash. Stopped picking the most popular flowers, in the most popular colors, in the sizes that sell the most.

I’ve turned inward. I’ve begun writing about what matters in my life, in my world. I care more now about my work being a form of meditation. An opportunity to ponder our place in the universe.  My flowers are to me a symbol. A microcosm of the universe.

Since my art starts in the garden, I’m now seeking to translate lessons I’m learning there that inspire my work. I’m learning to write the stories, the messages, the ideas that motivate me to dedicate a painting to them. I care about what the painting will symbolize for me and perhaps for others.

Writing is helping me to find the language to express my thoughts. These thoughts are embedded into the artwork I create. Each painting is a manifestation of these ideas. I am now working towards a deeper interpretation of my work beyond just the visual.

In thinking about my art I had always labeled myself a floral or a landscape painter. My work was very realistic, the more realistic the better. I loved creating the details.

However, the work I’ve begun doing over the last few years has changed. My mediums, my style, and my thinking. For the past 30 years I’ve been a digital painter, (yes, before Apple, before Photoshop). Now I’ve returned to my roots and I’m painting again in oils. There’s no $20,000 digital system between my work and my body. I am again, up close and personal.

This change in medium, this physical closeness to my work, this reawakening has given me an opportunity to re-evaluate what it is that I’m trying to do. To say.

As my forms become more simplified, more minimal, more stylized, my thinking has gone deeper. Richer. More meaningful. So this is why I now relate less to floral painters but more to meditative, more minimalistic painters, more abstract painters. It’s not really just about the flower. The colors. The form. It’s about what I’m thinking, what I’m feeling, what I’m learning. The garden is my tutor. These are lessons we can all learn if we pay attention quietly to what’s around us. The lessons carried to us on the wind.

 

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Mary Ahern Artist Biography

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VORACIOUSLY CONSUMING LIFE

Mary Ahern Painting in the StudioThrough the twisting paths and obstacles in life, the two constants for me have been my Art and my Garden. These are my anchors. They keep me balanced, complete, secure. The arrival of spring flings me from my studio where I’ve been creating my Art all winter, into the emerging garden surrounding my studio.  The colors shout optimism to me. The joyous season has begun again. This is where I grow my subjects and gather the imagery for my work.

I’ve been an Artist for eons, exploring as all true Artists do, a myriad of subjects and with enough mediums that fill drawers and cabinets throughout my studio. I’ve been zigging and zagging throughout my journey with all the bumps and joyous bursts I could grab. Some of my work through the years has had autobiographical underpinnings, some of it was icy flat. I’ve worked big and I’ve worked small. But when it comes down to it, I love color.

RIFFING ON CLASSICAL ART

Siberian Iris TrioI love studying Art History. I’ve been doing it steadily now for decades. My personal library still contains the first book in which I saw the work of Georgia O’Keeffe in the 1970s. I wept each time I opened it. I had to limit myself to 10 pages a day since I was exhausted from looking, from feeling, from studying. I remember stroking the large pages hoping to absorb something, something unknowable to me at the time. Her work somehow spoke to my soul. 

Though I’ve absorbed some of Georgia’s iconography, when I’m painting in traditional oils I reach backwards to techniques of the Old Masters. I enjoy the process of grisaille painting with the painstaking layers of glazes but I do it with a modern flair. Speaking of modern, I may reach backwards to compositions inspired by Raphael’s Madonna del Prato but I may do the painting using digital mediums with Siberian irises as subjects.

My classical art education in New York City was probably the last gasp of formal training before the onset of conceptual and performance art took hold. My professors were all active and renowned in their fields, Wolf Kahn, Herb Aach, Robert Birmelin, and Louis Finkelstein. The foundation in color and design they taught is still the basis of all my work. I am indeed fortunate to have studied with professors who opened their SOHO studios and used the NYC art scene as an integral part of their classroom. 

The proximity I still have with my studio one hour’s train ride from the array of museums and galleries in NYC is rejuvenating, inspiring, and jump-starting. My education never ends.

HURLING MYSELF THROUGH LIFE

1986 Mary Ahern working on the Chyron ChameleonOnce I recognized that I was an artist, I’ve always maintained a working studio even when at times circumstances prevented great productivity. Then I would sit in there and study my books of the masters, absorbing not only their techniques but also an understanding of the enormous obstacles most of them had to traverse in order to continue forward with their work. They kept me going.

I make lemonade out of lemons. To remain in the world of creativity and support my sons as a single parent, I navigated into the nascent world of computer graphics during the 1980s. Here I sold graphics and electronic paint systems to the Television & Production industry for use in on-air graphics and advertising. My Art training was put to good use as I demonstrated the systems to my target market of creative professionals who were just converting from traditional mediums to digital.

After receiving a concussion on the glass ceiling, I began my own graphic design business. Designing print media for my clients turned into repurposing their material once they recognized the value of the Internet. I built my first website in 1995, the year after the Internet became publically available. Having a low threshold for boredom has helped me shape my ongoing career in the Arts by pushing me to continually try new ideas, concepts, and mediums.

AND THEN FOR A REAL CHANGE OF PACE

Mary Ahern in the studio with Subtle Exuberance - Tree Peony oil painting.Exactly 20 years after I graduated with my Fine Arts degree I graduated with a degree in Ornamental Horticulture with a focus on Landscape Design. I am combining my art and my love for gardening that was instilled in me as a child by my favorite Uncle Teddy. I am absolutely driven by these two passions. In fact, in 2000 I rebuilt my home and added two studios overlooking the gardens I’ve designed over the decades. These gardens that surround me in the quaint town of Northport on Long Island and beyond are the main inspiration for my Art.

I demand excellence in my work and continuously strive to be a subject-matter-expert in my fields of study. My expertise, not only in the mediums I choose but also in the subjects of horticulture and landscape design that I represent in my close-up florals and landscape paintings of gardens is critical to me.

I have a passion for life and learning. It is at the core of my being and who I am as a person and as an Artist.

 

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Living and Painting in Layers

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Last week we had temperatures in the 30’s every day. The clocks changed and now it’s dark by 4:30 where I live. That may sound pretty grim but for me, it signals the opportunity to go into my studio to paint without the tugging and nagging feeling that I should be out in the garden, planting, weeding, pruning, and planning. Now, guilt-free I’m in my studio creating the paintings of the flowers from summer.

And guess what? Yesterday, today and for the next few days, the temperatures have returned to the 70’s. So the sunshine has seduced me back into the garden. Finally today I finished planting the 100 plus bulbs I bought on some wild spending spree a few weeks ago. The daffodils, the oriental, martagon lilies are in. The bearded iris have been planted in the little nooks and crannies where there is some sunshine. And all the five different kinds of alliums are finally in the ground.

Alliums, you may or may not know are onions, these are ornamental onions. Not the kind I cooked dinner with tonight. I made a new recipe with spanish onions, turkey sausages, grapes, cumin, vinegar, roasted potatoes, and some of the meager crop of tomatoes I grew from seed this year.

As I cut up the onions I thought about all their layer upon layers. Which led me to think about my paintings. I paint in layers. Layer upon layer of thin transparent paint. As the painting comes into existence it reminds me of my darkroom days and watching the photograph begin to arrive in the chemical baths. I tend to work all over the surface so the entire painting emerges pretty much at the same time.

My paintings are very much like me. Like you. Like everyone. We’re all layers upon layers of information, experience, emotion, and intellect. Interest and drive are hidden in there too. Hopes and dreams also come to mind. Many people don’t like to look below the first layer of who they are. I, on the other hand, dug deep into the bone marrow to find the core of what makes me tick. Then I covered it up so the rest of the world wouldn’t find it easily. Keeping that core wrapped in swaddling clothes held closely, is one of the mysteries I keep safe and protected from the seasons of change.

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My Seasonal Studio

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Throughout the year I spend time immersed in my garden in the warm summer sunshine and the deep winter snow. The myriad of colored petals, the exquisite architecture of a flower’s anatomy, the subtle shifts of green inspire me throughout the seasons.

Mary Ahern in the Camellia Garden

Here’s me in my spring garden with the camellias in bloom that inspired the original painting that is behind me in an aluminum print. The aluminum hangs outdoors all year long whether the camellias are in bloom or not. You can buy them on my website here.

There are seasons I’m with my flowers in the garden and seasons where they enter my studio as inspirations for my paintings and drawings. Each art form is dependent on the other to continue my seasonal shifts of creation.

All winter I paint flowers. The bright happy flowers of my summer garden follow me into my studio and surround me with their joy and inspiration during the short dark days of winter. In my studio, they help me to wind down the hectic whirlwind of gardening in the bright sunshine.

But each year the same joy of being in my studio creating my Art begins to take a turn into claustrophobia when the daffodils spring forth with their joyous yellow heads as they entice me outdoors. It’s the beginning of the push and pull for me to be in my studio or to be in my garden. Both are my creative forces. Both get my creative juices flowing. Without either the other would be that much the poorer.

The balancing of time subsides somewhat in the mid-summer when the heat and humidity drive me back to the cooler breezes in my air-conditioned studio. Another burst of art flows from inside the walls during those hot weeks of August. When the humidity subsides the gardening resumes.

Inevitably when the nights begin to provide good sleeping weather, the transition from new expectations of growth in the garden turns instead to senescence and the decisions of what to preserve commences. Choices of what to overwinter, what must be sacrificed take precedence. Mulching, raking, clearing debris marks the bedding down of my outside work.

Then comes the time in the fall when the garden is put to sleep that the joyful season of painting and drawing begins again within the walls of my studio as I create my winter garden of work surrounded by my summer flowers.

Work in Progress in the Winter Studio

Visit my website to see what appeared in my winter garden!

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And Then I Stuck My Hand Into The Wood Chipper

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I‘m that kind of gardener. The one who opens the windows to inhale the smell of the soil in the morning mist. A day isn’t complete unless I’ve walked the woodland paths, seen the changes however small, what has begun, what has passed its peak of perfection. Which plants are inviting their cohort of pollinators, the array of the birds and the bees? This is the half-acre of land I’ve designed, planted and tended for over 30 years. The soil is rich in abundance, helped by the leaves I shred each year.

The garden constantly evolves with each season and each year as do I. Fall is when I gather the leaves and branches to shred and place back into the garden to keep the beds warm and covered from the winter winds. There is a rhythm to the garden as there is a rhythm to life.

For years I’ve had this chipper, its large, heavy and gunmetal gray. When the machine roars into life in its loud and vicious voice you know it means business. I use this to make my own mulch. Gather my garden debris to enrich the soil and feed it into the maw of this machine. Chip my own branches for the pathways I walk and contemplate.

Once you put the cord to start the engine it drowns out the sounds of life around you. There is an urgency to feed the beast. I have my piles of leaves at hand to be shredded to shorten the duration of this violent machine and return again to the quiet contemplative space I crave. This is the stage to move fast to silence the din.

And then the blades jammed. The engine pushed and growled. The whole machine quivered trying to dislodge the offending object. The squeal of the engine roaring deafened me demanding a quick solution. I felt my heartbeat quicken. A frustration and impatience entered my being. A demand for a quick remedy.

So I removed the chute which served as the feeder to the blades. There I could see the chunk of wood jamming the metal and in my mindless haste I reached in with my hand to unblock the shredder.

The searing pain was beyond description. More than I’d ever experienced in my entire life. Beyond childbirth, beyond car accidents. Beyond anything my mind could process. And I was alone. No one to call out for. No one could hear me. I just let my arm hang limply by my side. And I refused to look down. Not prepared yet to see what I was left with from what I knew was a defining event of my life.

Woodland Trees and SkyI leaned forward against the railing of my deck, my mind emptied of rational thought. No plan of action arrived. My logical brain inactive, devoid of anything other than the pain. It gripped me. Wrapped me wholly. I was enveloped with pain. Just the thumping, throbbing, pounding of pain.

Then I looked up. The trees were swaying gently with the wind in their long and pensive manner. The leaves, dressed in their fall colors. were wiggling and waving at me beckoning my attention. Beyond was a brilliant blue sky, the most beautiful blue I’d seen in my entire life and I’d seen many. The breeze caressed me. It was a moment of indelible beauty. My world came to a halt. My garden surrounded me with healing calmness. Caressed me with its fragrance, its life. I was bodyless.

Now I understand more of why I garden. It’s not for me to show my friends my great expertise. To flaunt the rare specimens I collect. To boast in my selection of flowers for color balance and seasonal flair that I am able to coax into being. My garden is not an ego trip.

This garden is threaded through with paths, to walk through, to discover, to immerse yourself. The journey around my garden is for enlightenment. The senses heightened by the wisp of nuance seen from the side of one’s eye. It’s in a subtle awareness of the healing that we gather from the earth. The wonder of how interwoven we are with the natural world surrounding us. The fact that we are just another component of an incomprehensible network of living beings. It is humbling.

And if we listen, the garden also teaches us to ponder, to meditate, to slow our heartbeat down to absorb life. It teaches us to travel inside our soul to seek our essence. Gardens are about optimism too. The grand possibilities of our future. What profound truths will reveal themselves? What miracle will the world visit upon us graciously?

Oh, by the way, I forgot to mention, my fingers were not shredded that day.

Graphite Drawing of Gourds in my Studio

Graphite Drawing of three gourds is one of the many artworks I have been very lucky to be able to continue creating.
You can see more drawings on my website, click here.

 

 

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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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My Drawing Style is Just Icing on the Cake

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Some parts of creating my art are more meditative than others. My drawing process is one of them.

I work with lead pencils filled with different weights. Usually, I start with a 3H which is a harder lead and lighter. Then on the second go-round, I switch to a 2H which is a little less hard and a slight bit darker. Eventually, I do my darker shadow areas with an HB lead which is what we all used in elementary school with our yellow pencils and pink erasers.

The motion I use is a type of squiggly form which can only really be seen when your nose is up close to the drawing. I obliterate the light lines I initially create when drawing the form of the flower so the edges are quite soft.

This slow rhythmic looping movement with the pencil was so familiar to me when I first started doing these tonal drawings.  I felt in my hand and wrist that I’d made them before but couldn’t identify where but knew it was my handwriting.

And then one day I remembered the tactile feel. As a very young child, I baked my Betty Crocker cakes topped with chocolate icing. I made the icing by melting blocks of unsweetened chocolate & swirling into it some powdered sugar. With a spatula, I spread that soft chocolate creaminess onto the top and the sides of the cake using this same slow rhythmic swirling motion. I would spend as long as I was allowed to swirl and swirl and swirl by those sitting at the edge of the counter watching and waiting to dive into the eating stage.

That movement is so soothing for me that I have to remind myself to stop and declare the drawing done. Art is never really complete. You can caress it for eternity. It’s not like a cake that has a defined purpose, one that demands completion so it can be eaten. Drawing is endless. But eventually, I just have to “Ship It”.

Drawing is Just Icing on the Cake - Mary Ahern Artist

Drawing is Really Just Icing on the Cake for Me.

 

 

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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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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

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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

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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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What I Did After Art School

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As I mentioned in a previous post, Professor Louis Finkelstein, the Art Department Chairman abruptly walked out on me at my senior thesis show when I mentioned that I was about to be a single mom declaring it to be impossible that I could also be an Artist. He previously had offered to sponsor me to the notable, Robert Pincus-Witten for a Whitney Museum Graduate Fellowship program but suddenly I was anathema. That event took my breath away for quite some time until I began to gather the pieces of me that felt flayed and strewn to the wind.

So what did I do to salvage my heart and soul? Since 4 years of art school didn’t train me for anything remotely connected with making a living, I knew I needed more education. I also found out that if you worked at a college your tuition was free. So I made a list of colleges I wanted to attend & found a job in the career services office at Barnard College. During my lunch hours, I attended computer programming classes at Columbia School of Engineering. Going from such intense right brain to left brain work was so difficult it often physically hurt.

Barnard at the time was a bastion of feminism and my boss, Martha Green guided me and untold numbers of other women into successful and rewarding careers based upon skills which, I for one did not know I had. She recognized in me untapped horizons and restored my confidence.

1986 Mary Ahern sells the Chyron Chameleon

Mary Ahern demonstrating the Chyron Chameleon electronic paint system 1986 at the Cablevision television studio in Woodbury New York

 

From the support and direction I received from the women surrounding me at Barnard, I launched my career into sales, because that’s where the money was, and computers, because that’s where the future was. I zig-zagged my career in computers over the years to capitalize on my Fine Arts degree by selling computer graphics equipment to the creative departments in the television broadcast and industries. My art helped me sell those systems.

So here I am, still painting, still an Artist, proud of having supported and raised my sons on my own. Now I work every day in my studio surrounded by the gardens I created that inspire my Art.

I kept my eyes and ears open and when one mentor slammed the door another mentor opened it for me so I could charge through. Success is the sweetest revenge. Thank you Martha!

Mary Ahern's studio February 2018

Mary Ahern’s studio. Still painting after all these years!

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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.

Fire Flame Peony Fine Art Painting by the Artist, Mary Ahern

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.

Fire Flame Peony

These Fire Flame Peonies bloom in my garden each year in May at the same time as the color matching azalea.This and other pieces of my Art can be purchased in various sizes on canvas, fine art paper, metal and acrylic in my online Art Shop.

 

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Informational Interview of the Artist, Mary Ahern

My Art Starts In The Garden Posted on by

I was asked to do an informational interview by Misty Swan who is working on her college Art degree. Here are her questions and my responses. This interview was done via email.

  1. Please state your name, the name of your business, city and state you live in, and your profession.

Name: Mary Ahern

Business names: Mary Ahern Artist, Reimagined Memories, Fine Art for the Garden and ondesign.com, a website design business.

Place: Northport NY.

Profession: Professional Artist

  1. How long have you been pursuing photography and painting?

I began painting & photography in the mid-1970’s.

  1. What excites you the most about photography and painting?

Creating something out of thin air that no one else had ever seen in the same way that I had.

  1. How much training and education have you received in your field?
  • I graduated with a BA in Fine Arts from Queens College in NY in 1980. During the 70’s, Feminist Art work was on the rise as was Photo-Realism along with many other avant-garde styles. Most of my professors had studios in SOHO, which at the time was the center of the NY art scene. We were encouraged to frequent the galleries, set up interviews with artists and critics and generally be involved in some way with the art scene.
  • After college, and not wanting to starve, I built a career selling computer graphics platforms to the TV broadcast & production industries. In order to sell this technology I had to learn all the graphics & electronic paint systems . Training was provided on the job but I brought my Art background with me.
  • Because of my love of gardens and flowers in 2000 I earned an AAS degree in Ornamental Horticulture exactly twenty years after my BA in Fine Art.
  • To brush up on my drawing skills I returned to school for a 2 year diploma/certification in Botanical Illustration from the New York Botanical Garden graduating in 2004
  • A week never goes by that I don’t take an online webinar in either painting, software or marketing. I have taken so many webinars & seminars over many, many years that it’s too hard to count. I believe in life-long learning.
  • In 2015 I took a 1 year mentorship program in portrait painting from an artist like myself who is based in Louisiana. He pushed me out of my comfort zone to paint people. There is always more to learn, to grow, to expand.
  1. How did you choose your field of photography and painting?

I don’t really understand the question. Do you really choose a field of painting style or does it choose you? My work has evolved as I evolved.

  1. How has the field of photography and painting changed since you started?

This question is really answerable in a dissertation, but here is a snippet.

I believe that technology has changed the field of photography the most. With the introduction of digital cameras the access to photography has reached a greater cohort of people. Mobile phone cameras have grown the accumulation of images exponentially but not necessarily artistically. The bar has been lowered to what the general public assumes is Art.

The field of painting has been less affected by the introduction of electronic paint systems since they, up until now at least, are still not in general use. Also, all the same rules of painting apply to digital as to traditional. It is just another medium in which to work.

  1. What are the most important skills to have in order to be successful in this field?

I am a great communicator, a salesperson, a marketing person. If I didn’t have these skills my Art would accumulate in my closets.

  1. What do you dislike about this field?

I dislike that many potential clients undervalue our work since they have the insane belief that we paint for fun and relaxation. Those are the ones that don’t understand the difference between a Professional Artist and a person who paints as a hobby.

  1. What is your most interesting photo shoot or painting?

I am always drawn to my garden for inspiration. The closer I paint the flowers the better. The colors are rich, the forms are voluptuous, the textures challenging.

  1. What are the things that keep you passionate and motivated in your field?

I constantly reach to learn more. A week never goes by that I don’t learn something new or refresh my knowledge base. I read Art books, I take webinars, I read Art blogs, I go to Art Shows & museums. I am always in a learning mode.

  1. Do you have any words of wisdom for someone entering this field of work?

One thing I was never taught in Art school was how to make a living from my Art. I used my own mental creativity to zig and zag myself into a career in the visual arts.

It is very rare for painters and photographers to make a really decent living from just the narrow vision of what they view as their Art. I had to step outside of my comfort zone in order to support my family but because I did it creatively, I was able to maintain a career with a tangential relationship to the Arts & also maintain a working studio.

As Artists we are creative people. Living creatively doesn’t mean that one has to be a starving Artist. In fact by thinking creatively and widely, you can have a profitable & emotionally fulfilled career. Enjoy!

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