O'Keeffe-isms

A collection of evocative quotations from the pioneering artist that offer insights into her ideas about art and the natural world

Georgia O’Keeffe was one of the most important and influential artists of the twentieth century. Bridging representation and abstraction, she depicted plants, flowers, cityscapes, and landscapes in iconic paintings whose unique style has become an indelible part of our visual culture. Drawn from her published writings, letters, interviews, and other sources, the quotes in O’Keeffe-isms provide insights into her artistic philosophy, creative process, and profound connection to the desert landscapes of New Mexico and the American Southwest. Poetic, fearless, and introspective, O’Keeffe-isms provides a vivid window into the mind of a beloved modernist artist who forged her own path.

• “I have wanted to paint the desert and I haven’t known how. I always think that I cannot stay with it long enough. So I brought home the bleached bones as my symbols of the desert. To me they are as beautiful as anything I know.”
• “I do not like the idea of happiness—it is too momentary—I would say that I was always busy and interested in something—interest has more meaning to me than the idea of happiness.”
• “The men decided they didn’t want me to paint New York. They wouldn’t let me. They told me to ‘leave New York to the men.’ I was furious!”
• “I’ll tell you how I happened to make the blown-up flowers. In the twenties, huge buildings sometimes seemed to be going up overnight in New York. At that time I saw a painting by Fantin-Latour, a still-life with flowers I found very beautiful, but I realized that were I to paint the same flowers so small, no one would look at them because I was unknown. So I thought I’ll make them big like the huge buildings going up. People will be startled; they’ll have to look at them—and they did.”
• “You decide on the kind of person you want to be, and then you get at it. It’s like a habit of neatness.”