Tag Archives: Inspiration

Lifelong Learning: A Personal Journey

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A Love of Reading from the Start
Mary Swart Reading The Poky Little Puppy (1953)

I’m in my 70s and very excited since I’m back at school and taking a new class. We are so lucky now that there are many ways to continue learning. We can take classes in traditional in-person settings, take online workshops, or pursue a hybrid balance. What a gift!

My pursuit of knowledge has always been eclectic. I study what I want, when I want or need it, to enhance the projects I’m working on. Not one to seek the traditional BA, MA, or PhD stepping stones, I followed the song made famous by Frank Sinatra, I did it “My Way.”

One of the constants in my life is that I’m always studying something. A deep and wide curiosity leads me to focus on personal growth and practical knowledge — from Maharishi to computer programming and everything in between.

Mary Swart, McKinley Junior High School, 1962. Front row 5th from left.

Starting college when my youngest entered pre-school gave me a late start to higher education. Once I entered the college classrooms, I experienced a surge of intensity for learning that has never diminished. In those earlier years, my studies were in traditional settings filled with students far younger than I was. It was fun to ruin the curve.

Online classes, initially offered by Lynda.com (now LinkedIn Learning), are how I studied in the mid-1990s as I balanced a full-time career while single-handedly raising my sons. These courses are brilliant orchestrations of various learning styles. This online coursework, consisting of 2-4 minute videos and written transcripts, runs the gamut of creative design, business, technology, and beyond. The subject offerings are now vastly more than in my original traditional classroom college settings.

On-site courses offer many benefits that I would not have benefited from in online settings. For two years, in the early 2000s, I drove over an hour each way (not counting the traffic delays) to study botanical illustration at the New York Botanical Garden (NYBG). Here, I studied botany with a microscope, pencils, and paint. Renowned artists flew in from around the world to teach Master class intensives. And they were intense! Being shoulder-to-shoulder with those artists was a stimulating challenge I wouldn’t have experienced watching them on a screen.

Many online classes over the years have allowed me to study subjects like digital painting, oils, watercolor, illustration, and abstraction. These online classes let me experiment quickly with various mediums and styles to see if they are something I might want to study more deeply. I remember taking an online workshop with an artist and then flying from NY to Baton Rouge to study in his in-person workshops. This would never have happened had I not met him and his work online. Both the online and in-person types of study are unique experiences in their way, and at times, one leads to the other.

Screenshot of one of the online Seth Godin & Bernadette Jiwa Akimbo courses I took with other students around the world.
It’s a great way to meet others who are interested in the same things as you.

Hybrid coursework is how I studied for years with the Art Business Coach Alyson Stanfield. Through her online workshops, personal online coaching sessions, and in-person Master Mind Workshops hosted around the US, I honed my skills in presenting and discussing my work. An outgrowth of this program was founding an online community of like-minded peers engaged with the same program and forming a monthly online meeting to discuss and support our ongoing work as we all continued to evolve.

When Covid hit, I was already comfortable with many new learning opportunities. Collaborative and community-driven discussions were the style of the workshops I took with Seth Godin on the Discourse platform. He introduced topics through recorded videos and posted questions. We posted our responses on the community boards, where we tagged each other, commented, asked questions, presented suggestions, and mentioned difficulties or successes we were encountering in our work. I have studied storytelling, creativity, and marketing geared toward non-profits in these collaborative learning environments.

Could I have learned subjects independently without taking some of these courses since I already have so much experience? Sure I could! However, the diverse types of structured learning experiences and interactions with fellow learners have been invaluable. The learning opportunities are endless, whether through traditional classrooms, online courses, or a blend of both.

Continuing to learn, grow, be open to new ideas, and study subjects I’m interested in changes me. It makes me more interesting. I have topics to talk with others about. Suggestions to make. Ideas to offer. It keeps me in the game. I’m taking Seth Godin’s online course on Udemy, “This is Strategy.” I guess life-long learning is my Strategy.

Originally published in Sanctuary Magazine.

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Awakenings in the Garden: An Artist’s Journey

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My garden has been the inspiration behind my art for decades but formally studying horticulture introduced me to an entirely new understanding of the garden. Studying the science behind this living environment at my doorstep, was and continues to be a source of endless investigation. Not just in the beauty a garden can project, but in the sustainability, the interaction, and reliability of the vast array of life forms involved in creating a mutually dependent whole. Because of this deep study of my garden, my art has changed. As I’ve grown in an awareness of the complexity of the garden that I’ve designed and tended for over 35 years, my art has changed too by becoming more expressive, less realistic, and more multilayered.

I first became aware of how I was being transformed, not just by having more technical knowledge through my studies in horticulture when one day, standing in my garden, my clothes and hands covered in dirt, scratched and bug bitten, a wave of quiet contentment entered my very being. Yes, I was exhausted, and my body was aching from the hours of hard physical labor, but something different was flowing through my mind. It was a sense of awakening. I felt it but I was not able to articulate clearly what I felt. I still don’t have the words completely to express this transformation. So, I have been trying to do so through my art.

Mary in Her Studio Working on Phaelanopsis Orchid (December 2020)

Working in my studio on the Phaelanopsis Orchid (December 2020)

Spending years since then of work both in my mind and physically, I have dug deeper into the metaphor the garden has represented to me about all living beings. It has taught me that in order to survive, the building of communities is needed to create a harmonic, healthy balance. The garden speaks to me of survival. I watch hummingbirds, with their long beaks, attracted to the long tubular flowers of the Salvias. I smell the late day fragrance of the Brugmansia as it seduces night pollinators less exhausted from a day’s work to help the lifecycle. Each insect, each flower, each fungus is only trying to survive for another season, another year, another generation. We as humans, like the complexities found in the garden are also trying to survive and hopefully prosper.

In my studio, my large, centrally focused flower paintings have been inspired by the imagery I saw through the microscopes used during my scientific studies in horticulture. The bold colors and large sized paintings were my way of grabbing the attention of the viewer just as the stunning presentation of a bold peony blossom calls out for attention.

Phaelanopsis Orchid (A Work in Progress,

Phaelanopsis Orchid (A Work in Progress, December 2020)
© Mary Ahern

Over time the education I am receiving from the garden has been changing me. My artwork Is reflecting my deepening thoughts, abstract concepts, and my openness to explore new ideas and deeper theories of the world surrounding us.

During Covid, another revelation presented itself to me. I began to look at the imagery posted online by NASA showing us the galaxy of which we are but a small part. I realized that the entire universe also depended upon that harmony and balance all of us, the garden included, must have in order to exist. This awareness of the delicacy of both the microcosm and the macrocosm of our worlds is what I am now trying to express in my artwork. Blending abstractions inspired by the cosmos transparently through the realistic flowers grown in my garden informs the current work in my studio.

The awareness of the multi-layered reliance on other forces to help in survival is humbling. This new awareness has deepened my gratitude. This is what I am now attempting to create in my studio.

Cosmic Phaelanopsis​ on Oil ~ 24 x 24 inches. Deep Cradled Hardboard

Cosmic Phaelanopsis​
Oil ~ 24 x 24 inches. Deep Cradled Hardboard.  Available on the website here.
© Mary Ahern

Note: “Cosmic Phaelanopsis” is the final work after I put the piece aside  for two years due to being dissatisfied with its direction. The final “Cosmic Phaelanopsis” is an example of the new direction my work has taken.
​
Partial Artist Statement:
This artwork sparks a vital conversation reflecting the interconnectedness and balance within the microcosm of my garden and the macrocosm of the cosmos. My work draws inspiration from the life cycle of flowers to explore existential questions about existence, purpose, fragility, and interconnectedness.

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A Virtual Visitor Had Me Contemplating My Lifelong Career in the Arts

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Judy Chicago

Photo of Judy Chicago  by Donald Woodman

A short while ago I had a virtual visitor enter my studio while I was standing at my easel working on an oil painting. The visitor was Judy Chicago who was interviewed for the 60-year retrospective of her work at the New Museum in New York. Out of the corner of my eye, as I continued to paint, I watched and listened to the live-streaming event for the exhibition “Herstory” (here’s the YouTube Video of the event) which was the first comprehensive museum survey of her work. Judy Chicago was born in 1939 and as I listened to this interview it was 2023. Eighty-four years is a long, long time to wait to have this type of recognition.

This juxtaposition of Judy being live-streamed into my studio as I painted was profound for me since Judy’s work and those of many other women artists whom I was fortunate enough to be made aware of during the 1970’s when I was majoring in art in college, are why I’m still creating my work. These women artists weren’t in my textbooks. They were instead presented to me by some of the women art historians and women professors I studied with when I was lucky enough to attend classes at the then, tuition-free, City University of NY. All these women changed my life. The women artists were showing a new way of working and the professors were exposing us to a reevaluation of the art historical canon.

I first saw Judy’s work in 1979 as thousands of us made a pilgrimage to the Brooklyn Museum of Art to view The Dinner Party. This groundbreaking installation was created with Judy’s vision and also the efforts of hundreds of women offering their skills in various mediums. This work helped to introduce fabrics, embroidery, stitching, ceramics and various other techniques which had been ungraciously removed from the category of “Fine Art” by those who were in charge of writing the history of art. These creative skills were those exercised primarily by women and now were finally being presented in museums.

We stood for what seemed like hours, quietly waiting for our turn to enter the site-specific art in the room which housed the installation. Most of us on the long line had dressed in better than everyday wear for the occasion. When we finally reached the doorway, we found the room lights were dimmed. We entered as if entering a house of worship. Voices were hushed. Many folded their hands as if in prayer. It was the closest I’d come to a sacred event outside of an actual house of worship. We all knew this was a pivotal point in our lives. Our eyes and minds were to be opened to entirely new languages, visuals and histories that we’d never encountered before in the mainstream art world. Upon emerging from this immersive experience, we were elated, buoyant, excited beyond imagination by the possibilities we’d just been introduced to. We were sure that now everything would be different. We knew it had to be.

Upon reading Judy’s recent book, The Flowering: The Autobiography of Judy Chicago”, I learned how hard a life she had bringing her visions to fruition and acceptance. She and her work were torn apart, reviled, and denigrated by the conventional art world. The press denounced her vision and the work of the women artists who contributed their skills. Reading about her hard-fought lifetime of bringing her art into the world, reminded me that all of us have obstacles in our lives. They vary from person to person. But to be a creative artist for an entire lifetime takes a certain amount of grit. Success, by whatever measurement we use, takes the ability to keep pushing forward through the hard times. The times your heart is breaking. The times you are having trouble putting food on the table. The times your family is in crisis. The times you feel less than because others feel so much more than.

Because of these feminist artist pioneers, I’m still painting, still creating, still growing. They cleared the path and showed me the way. And as I stood at my easel painting, Judy streamed in to tell me to keep going, there’s no quitting, there’s no calendar, there’s no promise, no destination. I’ll just keep making my art. She still is.

Photo collage by Mary Ahern

 

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My Dual Passions – Art and Gardening

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At the age of 14, I was alone and lying in the summer grass on a hill in Brooklyn, New York, staring upward through the leaves at the passing clouds while trying to understand why a person I loved dearly had suddenly died. Without an anchor or language to explain the passage, I was at a profound loss and searching for an answer, an explanation. I clearly remember feeling the warm energy from the ground swell up and pass through my body and like a mist, mingle into the leaves and up into the clouds in that deeply blue sky.

At that moment, I recognized that I, as a person, was another aspect of nature, joined with the wind, the air, the plants, the trees, and all life teeming around me – just another form of energy. This gift has been with me throughout my life and is what I gather in my garden and express in my art.

1985 - Mary Ahern in the Cablevision studio working with the Chameleon electronic paint system.

1985 – Mary Ahern in the Cablevision studio working with the Chameleon electronic paint system.

Mary-painting-the white iris in her studio

Painting in my studio. The white iris blooms in my garden each spring. I glaze with thin washes using a fan brush and thinned paints.

My Zig-Zag Journey
Like most of us, our life journey takes many paths. For me, my twists and turns led me to a career that blended my fine arts training with my technical background. As a single parent with two hungry sons, I found a way to keep one foot in the arts by selling computer graphics equipment into the broadcast television industry. Creating graphics and fine art using the computer as my medium enabled me to have the financial stability I needed to live the life I envisioned for myself and my family.

Learning is a lifetime passion for me. Within the classroom, I have formal degrees and certifications in fine art, horticulture, botanical illustration, logic and computer programming. To this day, I continue to take online and offline workshops in marketing, writing, and various artistic mediums and genres.

Throughout my work career, I always maintained my studio art practice since it is the root of all that I do and who I am as a human being. At the present time, I have the good fortune of continuing to work independently without needing clients, creating my artwork, showing it extensively in exhibitions, and lecturing on art.

Woodland Garden entrance.

Entrance to my woodland garden. Throughout my garden there are round things to be walked through, around and over.

I am not just an artist. I am a horticulturist on a mission to transform my surroundings. I created an artistic landscape around my home as a place to immerse myself – not simply a garden to be admired while sitting on the deck. Initially, I did not have a specific plan. Instead, I let the woodland speak to me. These woodland paths have gifted me with decades of intimate and satisfying connections with nature. I immerse myself in the changing light, the turning of the seasons, the gifts of growth, and the sadness of loss as the garden goes through its life cycles. This connection with nature has inspired my mind and my art for decades.

Creating my garden has many components, as does creating my art on canvas in my studio. The mediums change, but the design concepts are consistent. Through the creation of my garden and my paintings, I take into consideration traditional artistic issues such as focal points, perspective, repetition, rhythm, texture and scale. In designing my garden, however, which I consider a three-dimensional assemblage of objects, I also add the variables of time, season, vulnerability, happenstance and science to the creative process.

I have been designing and working in the woodland garden over the course of 30 years. It’s a place of journey and meditation. I’ve been collecting round things most of my life. They feature heavily in much of my art and garden designs.

Click here to see more of my oil paintings 

 

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I met a hero of mine, Audrey Flack

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My Audrey Flack-Books

Some of my Audrey Flack books.

Audrey Flack is a painter who, when I was in college in the 1970s, inspired me as I began my artistic journey. My art history teacher Patricia Hills at York College, which is part of the City University of New York (CUNY) system, introduced us to the many women artists who were pushing the envelope at the time. There was Audrey Flack, Joyce Kozloff and Judy Chicago. All of these women are currently Honorary Vice Presidents of the National Association of Women Artists. Since at the moment, I am Chair of the Public Relations Committee of NAWA it is such an honor to be meeting these artists who are still teaching us to keep working, keep pushing, and keep making our own artistic statements.

Recently I went with hubby Dave and my friends Susan Rostan & hubby Bob to the “Heroines of Abstract Expressionism” at the Southampton Arts Center here on Long Island. Audrey had work in the show but so did three other artists who had been members of NAWA, Nell Blaine, Dorothy Dehner, and Buffie Johnson.

Roz Dimon, Audrey Flack, Mary Ahern, Susan Rostan

Roz Dimon, Audrey Flack, Mary Ahern, Susan Rostan at the Southampton Arts Center, November 2023 Photo credit: James F Dawson

Since Susan and I are co-hosting the Historical Research Team at NAWA this was an auspicious occasion for us and opened up new opportunities for research and writing.

Then another amazing event happened, Audrey Flack was scheduled for a talk at Southampton two weeks later, so we signed up and took another drive out east. It sure was worth it! Audrey, who is now 92, was there and clear as a bell answered questions about her work and her experiences from the 1950s onward. She was funny, dished gossip, was fully knowledgeable about the era, the people, the art movements and who the players in the industry were at the time. She talked about the Cedar Bar where all the artists gathered, talked & drank after working in their studios all day. She talked about Jackson Pollack, Robert Motherwell, Clement Greenberg, Helen Frankenthaler, and many more artists and gallerists. In the audience, was a who’s who of the Hamptons Art Scene asking the questions and/or thanking her for her many contributions to the arts.

Audrey Flack-Southampton Arts Center

Audrey Flack at the Southampton Arts Center, November 2023 Photo credit: James F Dawson

I’m so grateful to still be able to be working as an artist, that I continue to grow, to enjoy and learn from other artists. To have this “brush with greatness” that I experienced by listening to, speaking to and having my photo taken with one of my own personal heroes sparkles brightly in my life’s journey. I thank Pat Hills for opening my eyes and my mind over 50 years ago to pay attention to these women artists who were clearing the path and showing us that we as women artists had voices and something unique to say. And after all these decades, we still have statements to make, wisdom to share, and paths to plow for others to follow.

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The Start of my Art Journey

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In 1973, fifty years ago I began my artist’s journey. Since I’d majored in music during my Junior and Senior High School days, playing the trumpet and conducting, I hadn’t taken any art classes. It wasn’t until my youngest son went to pre-school that I began stretching my wings.

My first step towards discovering that my life’s work would be an artistic journey was buying a Jon Gnagy, Learn to Draw set and experiencing a sensation that the charcoal was an extension of my hand, my arm and my body. It was thrilling!

After completing his entire set of drawing lessons, I decided to take painting classes at the local YMCA where I lived at the time in Queens, NY. So, I arranged for a babysitter, signed up for the oil painting class and made my first foray into Jerry’s Artarama art supply store with my supply shopping list in hand. How electrifying to be exposed to so many wonderful and exciting new products, widgets, thingies, colors, brushes, papers and canvas. Oh, the possibilities!

 

And that began my art supply addiction ;-).

Peach Still LIfe Painting by the artist, Mary Ahern

Still Life with Peaches, my second oil painting which was completed in 1973

Along with the small tubes of Grumbachers, some brushes, canvas boards and mediums, we were instructed to bring some pictures from calendars or notecards that we could use to copy. My first calendar photo was of a brilliant orange sunset with the silhouette of a house at the bottom. I still have these early paintings, some on walls, some tucked away.
The second oil painting I ever did I copied from a placemat that I had borrowed from a neighbor.

I so loved the image, not knowing at the time that it was representative of the golden age of Dutch still life painting from the 1600s. I had no formal knowledge of art history but, being Dutch, and having spent time in Holland as a child I had been exposed to the art hanging in the homes of my extended family. That still-life image spoke to me in a way I didn’t understand at the time. It spoke to me of family, of my history, of roots, of connection. It is also part of my art journey, not just another painting but the beginning of a 50-year adventure with all the ups and downs, zigs and zags. An adventure that, I’m happy to say is still unfolding!

This is my studio wall from some years ago with artwork covering a piece from many decades. Some are now in storage, some have moved to different walls. All of them speak to me of my life and artistic journey of these exciting 50 years of creativity.

Studio wall in 2019

One of my studio walls in 2019 with work from before college, during college and after college. Various mediums from oils to pastels to needlework to watercolor.

 

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Learning is Living

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Learning is living and since I’m still alive at 75, I’m still taking classes and workshops. I continue to grow in both technical skills and in mental comprehension constantly. Hubby Dave says that sharks have to keep moving or they die. Guess I’m a shark.

The hunger to learn is something I remember as a kid growing up in a non-intellectual family. Always the odd person out, nose in the book, tackling projects foreign to my foreign born parents. My drive was inexplicable to them and completely normal to me as water is to a fish.

Looking back on just the last few years there’s been an interesting assortment of topics. Two years studying digital painting with an artist in Louisiana which is interesting since I’ve been painting on electronic paint systems since 1986, well before he discovered the medium. But he had a different approach than I did so I learned quite a bit. I also learned more about southern culture during the workshops he held on a southern plantation. Hope he learned to appreciate some of my yankeeness too.

Purple-Phalaenopsis WIP

I could have signed it at this stage of the painting, but I knew it wasn’t speaking to me entirely yet. I didn’t work on it anymore for an entire year & then, after taking an abstract realism workshop I knew where it was taking me.

The next two years were spent learning about how to run my art business efficiently. We studied, websites, social media, marketing, blogging (like this and my garden blog), exhibitions, galleries, pricing strategies, wholesaling, licensing, retail and more. Traveling and meeting other artists who came from around the world to attend the MasterMind workshops was stimulating to say the least. For over 6 years I have continued to meet with some of these other working artists whom I met through this program. It’s so important to have people in your life who speak the same jargon as you do. I treasure these friends.

During Covid, I took two online workshops. One was on story writing and the other on being a creative person. These intensive programs had me sitting down and thinking, which was perfect during the isolation. They pushed me to question what I’m doing with my art and why.

What is the real meaning of the work I create? Where do my influences come from and do I have a point of view? How has it changed, where might it go? What other artists do I feel a connection with? A rhyming of thought? A riff on technique?

Last year I took another workshop, this time one focused on painting in abstract realism as a way to counteract the botanical illustration up close and detail work that I’d studied and worked in for years. It was a real challenge for me to splash paint, spread it with trowels, and get my hands and clothes covered in the bright colors I’m drawn to. It turned out to be very freeing and helped me transition into a new phase of my work.

What I’m learning is that I’m relearning. Revisiting some of the lessons I took over the last many years but this time with a lifetime of experience. Some of these experiences were good, others bad, and others horrid but all of them are what made me who I am today. My goals are different. My processes have changed. In some ways, I’m more open and in others more hyper-focused.

Maybe that’s the thread of my learning. I’m open to change. I studied digital painting although I’d been using that medium for decades already and I learned new processes that I hadn’t explored. I studied marketing after I’d spent a career in sales and marketing for business and expanded my ability to communicate with my audience. I study writing and creativity even though I’ve been writing and creating for most of my life. This practice continues to help me evolve and explore new ideas and thoughts hovering deep inside of me. And now I’m again studying painting which I began my studies with so many decades ago and my work is evolving in a way I never would have expected.

In each of these endeavors, I learned so much and reminded myself of lessons I’d forgotten or seen in another light. Learning is living for me. So maybe I am that shark that needs to keep moving through the water in order stay alive. Lucky me!

Cosmic Phalaenopis oil painting.

Cosmic Phalaenopsis is a 24×24″ oil on cradled hardboard. This is a combined inspiration from NASA space images and my purple phalaenopsis orchid.

 

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My Brush With Wolf Kahn

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Over the years I had a thin but important relationship with the famous artist, Wolf Kahn who passed away in March of 2020, just when the Covid lockdowns began. His wife, the artist Emily Mason whom he was married to for over sixty years, had died three months earlier leaving me with romantic undertones of love and commitment.

When I was studying art at Queens College in the late 1970s, my painting professor Robert Birmelin, invited Wolf Kahn to our painting class as a visiting artist. With an explosive personality quite opposite from each other, Wolf let us up to the roof of the building and gave us a very short blast of time to capture the sunset, perhaps fifteen minutes or so. We then returned to the studio for the intense critiques that followed. Apparently, my sunset painting with quick bold brushstrokes and vivid color moved Kahn enough to use my painting as the model for all the other paintings that he eviscerated. I felt rather proud of myself, to say the least.

Mary Ahern - Queens Village 1

Queens Village 1 – 1976 -Oil on Canvas.

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Joseph Raffael 1933 – 2021 – An Appreciation

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Joseph Raffael February 22, 1933 -July 12, 2021

Joseph Raffael
February 22, 1933 -July 12, 2021

One of my heroes died this week. Joseph Raffael was an artist who spoke and will always speak to my soul. We lived in different places. Lived different lives. Worked in different mediums. He was famous but left the NY art scene to live quietly in the south of France. I never made it big enough in NYC to have to leave it. But I live in the quiet town of Northport on the north shore of Long Island. We have each experienced different successes in our lives. A man, a woman, so different but so the same.

His own garden was his inspiration as mine to me. The whole garden and the individual flowers he grew there were his references. My garden too supplies me with the imagery and stories I create from. He worked in watercolors, me, not so much. Give me digital, give me a computer and stylus, give me my oil paints and I’ll paint you some flowers.

He studied with the greats. He went to Cooper Union and Yale School of Art. I went to the State University Queens College for art and the New York Botanical Garden for botanical illustration. He won a Fulbright fellowship & studied two years in Florence and Rome. I was a single parent painting when the kids went to sleep.

Every other year or so Joseph would have a solo show at the Nancy Hoffman Gallery in Chelsea that I would make a pilgrimage into Manhattan to see. I would find myself immersed into his world. Not just his garden, his flowers, but more importantly, his spirit, his thoughts, his beliefs. It was a spiritual journey I engaged with on those visits. His spirit resonated within me. I took my camera to the shows and from that I made videos to pay homage to him and his work. Perhaps you will understand if you watch them.

Joseph wrote books too. I have them and read them from time to time when I want a renewal. They are a touchstone to the thinking that he and I share. His words speak the thoughts residing in my mind. We both experienced deep and life-changing loss which turned us to search inward for answers to our questions.

Joseph and I never met in person but every single morning I wake up to his “Pink Peony” hanging on the wall opposite my pillow. He signed it to me with my name and with his. He appreciated what I had created for him. He wrote to me from France to thank me and the package arrived at my doorstep.

Joseph Raffael lives on in his paintings, his writings, his spirit, his very being. I do not mourn his passing, I celebrate that he lived!

Joseph Raffael Artwork in my home

“April” A pink peony by Joseph Raffael in my home.

You can see my videos of his shows here,

and here too.

 

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Changing My Mind About Genre and Purpose in my Art

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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

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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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Yellow Tulip Squared – The Inspiration Behind a Painting

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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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Pink Floral Prints to Help Komen Breast Cancer Research

Art Naturally

Buy either of these Designer Prints and

I will donate 20% of the Sale to the Susan G. Komen Foundation.

I promise!

Kansas Peonies or Bleeding Heart – Designer Prints

Purchase either one of these Designer Prints in any size and I will donate 20% of the sale to Breast Cancer Research. Guaranteed!

Kansas Peonies by the artist, Mary Ahern. Art print available in various sizes on canvas, fine art paper, metal or acrylic.

Kansas Peonies. Designer Print ©Mary Ahern. Art prints available in various sizes on canvas, fine art paper, metal or acrylic in my Art Shop

 

Bleeding Heart by the artist, Mary Ahern. Art print available in various sizes on canvas, fine art paper, metal or acrylic.

Bleeding Heart. ©Mary Ahern. Art print available in various sizes on canvas, fine art paper, metal or acrylic.

Why I am making this offer.

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.

Visit my eCommerce Shop to make your purchase.

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”.

This information initially supplied by Wikipedia.org c.2013

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