ChromaLuxe is the leader in aluminum for a variety of industries. The thick gauge of aluminum and the brilliance of their color matching makes for a perfect vehicle for my flower and garden prints.
I tested many brands from various vendors and ChromaLuxe proved to offer the superior product for my work. Prints of my original paintings have been hanging in my garden for over 5 years now. They have withstood winter snow and summer heat. I wouldn’t sell something I didn’t trust.
As an appreciation for my testing and our collaboration ChromaLuxe created and distributed a full-color brochure of my Artwork on their exterior grade aluminum.
You can even take your mobile device outside into your garden to use the Live Preview/Augmented Reality feature to see what my artwork will like in your garden. Have fun!
ChromaLuxe Customer Spotlight, Mary Ahern Artist. Page 1.
ChromaLuxe Customer Spotlight, Mary Ahern Artist. Page 2.
ChromaLuxe Customer Spotlight, Mary Ahern Artist. Page 3.
My Art Starts In The GardenPosted on by Mary Ahern
As a person involved in creating art for the past many years, the opportunities and revelations keep coming.
Mary Ahern – Outdoor Art Show with the Floral Park Art League 1975
The art world has changed but so have I. I’m more self-assured about my work than I was at the beginning. Through a lifetime of hard work, bumps, skids, rashes, pain, zigs and zags I’ve developed the thick skin needed to have confidence in my skills as an artist and as a person running a small business selling and showing my art.
We all know the tremendous changes that the internet and social media have introduced into the careers of artists. We are now independent enough to take our careers into our own hands rather than rely on galleries as the only outlet to selling or placing our work. I’m sure that for some artists, galleries are the central force in placing their work in prestigious collections and museums. For most of us though, galleries are not the only answer any longer.
Gallery representation isn’t for everyone
One of the obstacles for me is that I have 3 distinct bodies of work in which I like to create & promote. One is digital, one is in traditional mediums and the third is a combination of both. Even though they all focus on the same subject matter, flower and gardens, they all have very distinctive looks. I love the freedom that being independent affords me so I can create in whichever medium I choose.
As a lifetime entrepreneur the thought of having a gallery owner tell me what they want and when they want it is abhorrent to me. There is a benefit to being a working artist for many, many decades. I have the emotional and financial security to remain an independent artist. Having spent my former career in sales and marketing and also having had my own graphic design business for decades, I have the skills that many artists don’t possess.
I’m committed to creating my own art styles, exploring new mediums, enjoying the process of experimentation. But I’m just as committed to running my art business. Because of the tools now available through technology, the internet and social media I can do that myself at an affordable price. It’s a game-changer.
Recently I was asked what advice would I would give to my 21-year-old self on how to get started and keep motivated?
I can’t speak to my 21-year-old self since I was married and the mother of a baby boy by then. I didn’t put myself through college until my youngest went to nursery school. By the time I graduated from art school I was a 32-year-old single parent. A career was foremost on my mind in order to support my sons but I knew that I needed to focus on the arts in some way to follow my calling. By creative thinking & sheer guts, I got myself into the nascent computer graphics industry in the early 1980’s as a salesperson who had to use and demonstrate graphic devices and electronic paint systems. This gave me a toe-hold into the conversation of creative arts.
Critical as well was that I always maintained a working studio in my home, even sitting in it & studying art history books when I was too stressed to pick up a brush. Because I kept my focus on the artist part of me more than the technologist part of me I was able to transition into creating my own art more often as my sons grew up and life became easier. Maintaining this tangential association with the creative arts was the reason I’ve been able to now focus 100% of my effort into my artwork.
Keeping motivated isn’t difficult when you’ve burned with the desire to create your whole life. What does help however is having artist friends and mentors who understand the struggles to carve out the time to express yourself in an ever-busy world. Accountability partners help me to keep the balance needed to make room for the creation of art and the running of an art business. Either one of those activities is all-consuming but without one you don’t need the other.
Mary Ahern giving an Artist Talk at The Firefly Artists Gallery in December 2019.
My Art Starts In The GardenPosted on by Mary Ahern
Tired of the browns and grays and whites of winter? So am I!
I’m looking to get a jump on some brilliant color outside. I want to see color outside my windows, outside in my garden and outside on my deck. I’ll bet you are too.
Bright splashes of color greet me when the trees are bare and the shrubs covered with white snow. It is so cheery to see in the dead of winter. Seeing color reduces my stress. It probably does for you too. That’s why gardens are so relaxing.
ChromaLuxe exterior aluminum prints hang outside in my garden all year long popping color when I most need it.
During the spring and summer, I coordinate the color of my plantings with the colors in my art. It gives me a very creative palette of colors to work with. It adds to the fun of gardening.
I hang my aluminum art on the garage so I can see flowers all year from the windows in my home, I hang the art on my deck where we entertain and select art that color coordinates with my outdoor furniture. As a garden designer, I’ve designed woodland walks around my home and studio and even hang art on the trees for when people wander around on my garden tours.
I tried a lot of products outdoors in my own garden on Long Island in New York where we get snow and ice in the winter and lots of heat in the summer. I found that not all aluminum is created equal since much of it warped in the extreme temperatures. Then I tried the ChromaLuxe brand of exterior grade aluminum. I’ve tested these prints throughout all the seasons and they have flourished in my garden for years.
In my video, you can see some of the ways I’ve displayed my art in the garden and also the gardens of some of my happy customers. Take a look and be inspired.
Then have some fun. On my website I’ve introduced a separate category for the indoor/outdoor metal aluminum art with an augmented reality feature. Now you walk around your space with your mobile device and see how my art will look in your own setting. You can also try different sizes to see what will fit perfectly for you.
Seeing this live takes the stress out of deciding what artworks for you. It is the ultimate in customizing your own living spaces both indoor or out. Try it now. No commitment to purchase is needed to see for yourself. Go to my online shop, click on the metal print category, select an image that intrigues you, change the size, try a different print, try a different space. Enjoy yourself now!
My Art Starts In The GardenPosted on by Mary Ahern
Selecting art to buy online can be daunting but it doesn’t have to be. In my Art Shop I’ve added a few features to help you take the guesswork out of what art and what size will work in your space and what will not. It’s called Live Preview AR (for Augmented Reality.)
Using your own mobile device you can select a print from any of my collections of landscapes, floral portraits, still lifes and designer prints and view it through your on-board camera projected onto your wall space. You can resize the image of the print until you find that perfect sweet spot that will work for you in your own particular setting.
You can easily select different prints to view. Will a landscape style work or perhaps a square print? Choose prints to view either by clicking directly on their image in the category library or just press the left or right arrow to view the next in line. All the available sizes for each print are quickly and easily seen by you in the pull down menu right at your fingertips.
To exit Augmented Reality is easy and brings you right to the ordering page. You have an array of options in which to choose. What surface do you want for your print? Canvas, fine art paper, aluminum or acrylic? Once you decide the size and treatment you might consider a frame or matting depending on your choice of materials.
Now that your selection is made just click to see your shopping cart and the rest is a breeze. The hardest part will be anticipating the arrival of your very own piece of Art, custom chosen by you for your own special place. Enjoy!
I have always dreamed about having my Art displayed outside around my garden and outdoor living spaces. And now the technology has caught up with my dream. I have my original paintings printed under heat & pressure to create these very vibrant aluminum prints. They can have a glossy or matte finish to them and I haven’t any particular preference since I like them all.
Sunflowers and Purple Asters aluminum print at the entrance to the home of one of my collectors.
The weather-resistant aluminum which I’ve selected for my Art is thick and durable enough to survive and flourish in my garden throughout the 4 seasons and has been doing so since 2014. Because I wanted to make sure that the quality was right and the color lasted I tested many fabricators before offering the metal prints to my collectors.
Sometimes I frame the pieces in simple aluminum frames but most often I just hang them outside, on the trees, on the fences and on the walls. What a delight to look out of my office and look at art instead of looking at my garage & thinking it needs powerwashing! Even better is looking out in a snow storm and seeing the brilliant color of summer flowers breaking through the white and gray backdrop.
When the birds decide to decorate the art, I just squirt the pieces with some window cleaner and using a paper towel I wipe them clean again. No problem.
The aluminum makes the colors pop whether they’re on a matte or glossy finish. Though these prints can be hung outdoors many of my collectors buy them for inside their homes. Either way, it’s a unique decor addition whether inside or out.
My Art Starts In The GardenPosted on by Mary Ahern
Art in the Park
Art, Music, Poetry and Dance Festival
A July summer event, featuring music, dance, poetry and over 30 artists displaying and selling their original work. Art show begins at 10am and festivities begin at 12pm. Free admission and a fun day for the entire family. Hours are 10am to 5pm.
Join us for another exciting event in the picturesque Village of Northport, NY. This multi-disciplinary annual event is held in the Village Park at the foot of main street surrounded by the lush tableau of water, boats, trees, playgrounds and the old time Village feel of another, calmer and genteel era.
My Art Starts In The GardenPosted on by Mary Ahern1
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.
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.
My Art Starts In The GardenPosted on by Mary Ahern
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.
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.
Select the medium of your choice: Canvas, Fine Art Paper, Acrylic or Metal.
Next, you select the size of your Art.
Based on the medium you’ve chosen you will be able to choose options such as framing or matting.
Now you can either add your Art to the Shopping Cart or save it to your Favorites right there in the Shop.
Other nifty features:
Examine the texture and details of a painting using the ZOOM tool.
Email your favorite painting to a friend for their opinion.
Your purchase is a safe and secure checkout using PayPal or your credit card.
Who has time to waste trying to figure out new menus?
I like diagrams. Don’t you? Here is a diagram that will show you the many different treatment options available to you for each Art Work in my Shop
Choose from the hundreds of sizes and treatments of my Flower and Garden Art.
This is the ultimate in customization for you to use when designing for your home or office.
Now you can visit my Art Shop and try these features on any of the hundreds of sizes and treatment variations available to you for your home or office! Have fun!
My Art Starts In The GardenPosted on by Mary Ahern
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.
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.
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.
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.
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”.
In my late summer garden this dramatic combination of colors occurs when the daylillies bloom amongst the rudbeckia. The cultivar name is Frans Hals daylily so how could I not fall in love with it given my Dutch heritage. The rudbeckia is the classic variety named Rudbeckia fulgida and multiplies happily in this garden setting.
I composed this painting in a classical pyramidal style for the daylilies then using the receding rudbeckia to open the space towards the background of trees and shrubs serving as a horizontal and vertical balance.
Frans Hals Daylilies with Rudbeckia 24×36″ Mixed Media on Canvas.
My Art Starts In The GardenPosted on by Mary Ahern
I finally bit the bullet and bought a new car to replace my 1996 Nissan Pathfinder with 200,010 miles on it. I called her my gardening car since I could pack so many plants in her. She also carried my Art to many, many Art Festivals over the years. By giving her up I felt almost the same sense of mourning as I did when I lost 4 trees in my woodland garden to Hurricane Sandy. This car had carried my Art and me safely throughout six states worth of Art Festivals
1996 Nissan Pathfinder pulling my trailer filled with Art to one of many Art Festivals
But it was time. The rust, the rattles, the pervading sense of being stranded somewhere if the trusty ‘ole car decided to bite the bullet. It was very hard to find the right replacement vehicle. I took tape measuring to all the dealerships in search of the perfect match. To my dismay I discovered that all the SUV’s have been pumped up on steroids since I was last in the market. Too many rows of seats and driving around in a McMansion didn’t hold appeal for me.
After much searching I finally choose a RAV4 by Toyota. It fit the dimensions of my large paintings but wasn’t too over sized for day to day driving. So I’ve downsized slightly in order to have a fully flat surface for transporting plants & Art. The back seat is a bench style while most of the larger ones have bucket style seats.
Oh, and I was able to get it in green. Not a color offered very frequently anymore. One of the things that was a big pleasant surprise since I hadn’t had a new car in decades, was all the new technology built into cars nowadays. The new toys helped with the sorrowful transition I felt on abandoning my old friend.
My RAV4 holding an entire Art Exhibition of 32 Paintings.
Here is a video which I originally created in July of 2013 of how I prepare prints for display and sale at outdoor art festivals .
I took these video clips in my studio as I prepared for the Northport Art in the Park hosted by the Northport Arts Coalition.
I used a Canon Power Shot SD3500 IS Digital ELPH, holding it in one hand and demonstrating with the other. I used the audio from the camera which is muffled at times since I put my finger over the microphone. I originally started with 18 minutes of video clips and brought it down to about 4:15.
I edited in iMovie with the end credits created in Photoshop.
Fun little project which I wish I’d given myself more time to perfect but there are always choices to be made. Time being the one thing I can’t seem to stretch.
My Art Starts In The GardenPosted on by Mary Ahern
Rose Montage has 5 individual digital paintings of Roses. Framed size is 8 x 39.5″
This is the month for the annual silent art auction fundraiser in support of the Huntington Arts Council’s exhibition program at the Main Street Petite Gallery and Art-trium Gallery in Melville.
November 9 – November 30, 2012
9-5PM
Huntington Arts Council Petite Gallery
213 Main St.
Huntington NY 11743
Contact: Florence Dallari, Asst. Dir. 631-271-8423
Huntington Arts Council Website: http://www.huntingtonarts.org
This year I’ve donated my White Rose Montage to this worthy fund-raiser.
I designed this long 8″ x 39″ montage for all the folks who tell me they can’t buy my work since they don’t have anymore wall space. This piece fits nicely between windows or as an accent piece at the edge of a wall. It has 5 individual digital paintings of roses for all those rosarian collectors out there.
The holidays are coming and you can do two nice things for the price of one. Bid on this piece to help support the Huntington Arts Council and then give it as a gift to one of your special friends.
