Tag Archives: Inspiration

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.

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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.

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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.

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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

My Art Starts In The Garden

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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