Getting to Know Georgia O'Keeffe
There are certain artists whose names you recognize immediately, even if you don't know much about their lives or their work. Georgia O'Keeffe was one of those artists for me.
A note about the artwork: Georgia O'Keeffe's paintings remain protected by copyright, so I haven't reproduced them in this article. Instead, I've included links to museums and other official collections where you can view the actual paintings discussed. You'll also find links to historical photographs and additional information about the people and places in her life. I hope you'll take a few moments to explore them as you read!
Of course, I knew the name. I knew she was famous for painting flowers, often enormous flowers, and I had seen examples of her work over the years. But had I ever really taken the time to study her paintings, learn about her life, or understand why she painted the way she did?
Not really.
And with her birthday approaching on November 15, I thought this would be a wonderful opportunity to change that.
As a realism artist, my own painting style is quite different from O'Keeffe's. I love landscapes, wildlife, seascapes, and the little details that bring a subject to life. Georgia O'Keeffe, on the other hand, often took those details away, reducing a subject to its shapes, colors, and essential forms.
So what could a realist painter learn from an artist whose work looks so different? As it turns out, quite a bit.
But before I tell you what I discovered, let's get to know Georgia O'Keeffe herself.
A Young Girl Who Knew She Wanted to Be an Artist
Georgia Totto O'Keeffe was born on November 15, 1887, near Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, the second of seven children.
Growing up on a dairy farm, she developed an early appreciation for the natural world. She showed artistic ability at a young age and decided early in life that she wanted to become an artist.
That determination eventually took her to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Art Students League of New York, where she studied traditional drawing and painting.
She was quite accomplished. In 1908, she received a prestigious still-life award at the Art Students League.
Something I found especially interesting was that O'Keeffe began with a traditional academic education in art, including realism.
She knew how to draw. She knew how to paint recognizable objects. She had learned the techniques expected of a serious artist at the time.
But she began to question whether simply reproducing what she saw was enough. She wanted something more personal from her artwork.
The Teacher Who Helped Change Her Direction
Like so many artists, O'Keeffe encountered a teacher whose ideas changed the direction of her work. His name was Arthur Wesley Dow.
Dow believed that art was not simply about copying nature. He emphasized composition, relationships between light and dark, harmonious design, and the artist's personal interpretation of a subject.
O'Keeffe encountered his ideas in 1912 and later studied with him. Those lessons helped her move away from traditional realism and toward a more individual style.
Now, this caught my attention.
Like so many artists, I started my painting journey learning from Bob Ross. From there, I spent years studying with different artists, exploring their methods, and discovering new ways to approach painting.
Each instructor had something different to offer. Some changed the way I handled a brush. Others changed the way I looked at a subject or thought about composition.
That's what made Arthur Wesley Dow's influence on Georgia O'Keeffe so interesting to me.
He didn't simply teach her another painting technique. He helped her see the possibilities beyond what she had already learned.
Sometimes the most valuable lesson a teacher can give isn't how to paint something, but how to think about painting differently.
O'Keeffe's early abstract works offer a wonderful glimpse into this change in thinking.
In Blue #1, painted in 1916, flowing blue forms become the subject themselves. Rather than describing a recognizable flower or landscape, she was exploring what shapes and colors could communicate.
Finding Her Own Artistic Voice
Before O'Keeffe became internationally recognized, she spent several years teaching art herself.
She taught in Virginia, South Carolina, and Texas while continuing to develop her own artistic ideas.
During this period, she began creating abstract charcoal drawings that explored shape, movement, and design rather than depicting recognizable subjects in the traditional sense.
Those drawings eventually reached Alfred Stieglitz, a prominent photographer and influential New York gallery owner.
In 1916, Stieglitz exhibited several of her drawings at his gallery, known as 291. The following year, he organized a solo exhibition of her work.
By 1918, his support helped O'Keeffe move to New York and pursue painting professionally. They married in 1924.
I found this part of her story especially interesting because we often hear that success in the art world isn't just about talent. Sometimes it's also about knowing the right people, finding someone who believes in your work, and having opportunities to get your paintings in front of the public.
Would Georgia O'Keeffe have become as famous without Alfred Stieglitz?
There's no way to know.
His encouragement, connections, exhibitions, and financial support certainly helped bring her work to a wider audience. But O'Keeffe also had something no gallery owner could give her: her own vision, determination, and artistic ability.
It's a reminder that talent and opportunity often work together, even though we tend to talk about famous artists as if their success happened entirely on its own.
The Flowers That Made People Stop and Look
When most people think of Georgia O'Keeffe, they probably think of flowers.
But these weren't the little floral still-life paintings people were accustomed to seeing.
O'Keeffe brought viewers so close to her subjects that petals, folds, and centers could fill an entire canvas. Some of her works were several feet across.
The results could be dramatic, mysterious, and almost abstract.
Her reasoning was surprisingly simple. People were too busy to really look at flowers.
By enlarging them, she hoped to make people stop and notice the shapes, colors, and details they might otherwise overlook.
And she certainly accomplished that.
Take a look at Red Canna (1924–1925), with its fiery colors and overlapping petals. The flower nearly fills the entire composition.
Of course, people also began seeing things in those flowers that O'Keeffe said she hadn't intended.
Some critics interpreted the shapes as representations of female anatomy. O'Keeffe resisted those interpretations, insisting that viewers were bringing their own associations to her paintings.
Her Black Iris (1926) became a particularly well-known example of those debates.
This raises an interesting question.
Who gets to decide what a painting means—the artist who created it or the person looking at it?
I've brought up similar questions in my own painting classes.
I often tell my students, "This is your canvas. Paint what you want. Paint how it makes you feel. You do you."
Not everyone will look at your painting and see the same thing. And that's perfectly fine.
Of course, if somebody is paying you to create a commissioned painting, the conversation changes a little! Then you probably ought to ask a few questions about what they want the painting to communicate.
But when you're painting for yourself, I believe your own artistic voice matters.
That was something O'Keeffe understood very well.
Beyond the Flowers: Two Paintings I Never Expected
As I continued exploring Georgia O'Keeffe's artwork, I came across two paintings that genuinely surprised me.
Remember, I started this little adventure knowing O'Keeffe primarily for her enormous flowers. I had no idea just how varied her subjects had been.
The first surprise was Radiator Building – Night, New York, painted in 1927.
A New York skyscraper! Certainly not what I expected when I began researching an artist I associated with flowers.
The building rises dramatically into a dark sky, with glowing windows and brilliant beams of light. It's a striking painting and quite different from the floral works I'd been studying.
Yet the more I looked, the more I could recognize some of the same artistic thinking. Strong shapes, dramatic contrasts, and carefully chosen areas of light and color.
Different subject, but still very much Georgia O'Keeffe.
Then came my second surprise: Ram's Head, White Hollyhock – Hills, painted in 1935.
Now this one really caught my attention.
A ram's skull, complete with its sweeping horns, appears suspended above the New Mexico landscape alongside a delicate white flower.
The flowing shapes of the hills and sky reminded me of her other Southwestern landscapes. That part I could understand.
But then she placed a skull right in the middle of it!
It was such an unexpected combination.
And rather than simply dismissing it as unusual, I found myself wondering what she saw in those objects and why she chose to bring them together.
That, I think, was when my little research project became especially interesting.
I was no longer just learning what Georgia O'Keeffe painted. I was trying to understand why she made the artistic choices she did.
And suddenly, the woman I had thought of primarily as a flower painter had become a much more fascinating artist.
Some of O'Keeffe's artwork remains under copyright protection, so I've linked directly to museum collection pages where you can see these paintings for yourself. They're well worth a look!
Discovering the Beauty of New Mexico
In 1929, O'Keeffe made an extended visit to New Mexico, and the landscape captured her imagination.
The dramatic mountains, desert colors, expansive skies, weathered buildings, and sun-bleached animal bones offered her an entirely new collection of subjects.
She returned regularly for years before making Abiquiú, New Mexico, her permanent home in 1949. She also spent time at Ghost Ranch nearby.
Her landscape paintings are some of the works I found most interesting during my research.
For example, Black Mesa Landscape, New Mexico / Out Back of Marie's II (1930) shows how she could take a mountain or desert hillside, remove much of the fine detail, and still create something recognizable and full of character.
Rather than painting every rock, shadow, or texture, she concentrated on the larger shapes and transitions of color.
It's a very different approach from the one I usually take when painting a landscape. But I can appreciate the thought behind it.
In fact, sometimes learning what to leave out of a painting is just as important as learning what to put into it.
O'Keeffe found a way to express the feeling of a place without necessarily reproducing every visible detail. And that became an unmistakable part of her artistic identity.
An Artist Who Continued Creating
Georgia O'Keeffe had a remarkably long career.
After Alfred Stieglitz died in 1946, she continued her work and built a life centered on her art in New Mexico.
She painted landscapes, architectural forms, bones, flowers, and eventually subjects inspired by views from airplane windows.
Her work continued to evolve as her interests and circumstances changed.
Later in life, deteriorating eyesight made painting increasingly difficult, but she remained creatively active with assistance.
She died on March 6, 1986, at the age of 98.
By then, she had become one of the most influential American artists of the twentieth century.
Today, her paintings are held by major museums, and the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe preserves and studies her remarkable legacy.
But perhaps her greatest achievement was something less easily measured.
She developed a way of seeing and painting that was entirely her own.
What I Discovered While Getting to Know Georgia
Now, here's where I have to admit something.
I didn't begin this research expecting to become a Georgia O'Keeffe-style painter.
And I'm not going to pretend that I suddenly want to abandon my wildlife paintings and start filling enormous canvases with flower petals!
Flowers have never been my favorite subject, although I certainly know how to paint them. I've painted flowers in different styles and using different techniques, and there are plenty of ways to approach a floral painting.
O'Keeffe's method is another way. And the more I learned about it, the more interesting it became.
Looking at a painting such as Red Canna, I found myself wondering about the flower itself. What does a red canna actually look like? How do all those overlapping petals fit together? What made her choose this particular view?
I also found myself wondering about her working methods.
Research into her painting process reveals that she frequently planned her compositions through drawings. She carefully selected her colors and even kept painted color-reference cards to help her achieve particular effects.
That's interesting to me as an artist because the finished paintings can look so simple and effortless, yet there was considerable thought and preparation behind them.
One landscape was described as oil on canvas mounted to board, which immediately sent me off wondering about the support and why that construction was used.
I suppose that's what happens when one painter starts researching another. You don't just look at the finished painting. You start asking how it was made.
And I also learned more about the people who helped shape her career, especially Arthur Wesley Dow and Alfred Stieglitz.
All of these discoveries made me appreciate her work in a different way. Not because I want to paint exactly as she painted, but because I better understand the choices she made.
Appreciating Art Doesn't Mean We Have to Paint Alike
I think this may be my favorite lesson from getting to know Georgia O'Keeffe.
Two artists can stand in front of the same flower, the same mountain, or the same landscape and see two completely different paintings.
One may concentrate on fine details, realistic texture, and precise light.
Another may focus on bold shapes, sweeping lines, or the feeling of a particular color.
Neither approach has to be wrong.
What matters is that the artist has something to express and makes thoughtful choices about how to express it.
I love realism. I love bringing a subject to life through careful observation, light, shadow, and detail.
But I haven't always painted the way I do today.
In fact, like Georgia O'Keeffe, my own artistic journey has taken me in directions I never expected. I began with one approach to painting and, over the years, explored different subjects, styles, techniques, and methods. Some became a lasting part of my work. Others were simply valuable experiences along the way.
I didn't even begin painting until I was in my forties, so my artistic journey started considerably later than O'Keeffe's. And while I certainly haven't had her nearly century-long lifetime to explore everything, I hope I still have many years of learning, experimenting, and painting ahead of me.
The important thing is that neither of us felt we had to stay in the same artistic lane forever.
Georgia O'Keeffe found her own way of bringing subjects to life, often by simplifying them into their essential shapes and colors.
My work has taken a different direction, but I can appreciate the choices she made.
Sometimes, understanding another artist doesn't mean discovering that you want to paint like them.
Sometimes it simply means learning to see through someone else's eyes for a little while. And I think that's time well spent.
As we approach November 15, I want to wish Georgia O'Keeffe a happy birthday and thank her for reminding generations of artists to look a little closer, think a little differently, and trust their own artistic vision.
What about you?
Have you ever discovered an artist whose style was completely different from your own, but whose work made you think differently about painting?
I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments. And if you enjoyed this little journey through art history, don't forget to click the heart or like button!
Thanks for reading,
Hope Blakely – Keeping Happy Trees Alive
See It in Practice: Finding a Connection in the Collection
After spending some time getting to know Georgia O'Keeffe and her paintings, I became curious about something.
Was there anything in the Blakely Art Collection that might remind me of her work?
I started looking through the collection, hoping to find something that might offer an interesting comparison. And interestingly enough, one of the closest examples I found was my own painting, Eternal Horizon.
Maybe it was simply the desert landscape that made me think of O'Keeffe. After all, the dramatic natural formations and colors of the American Southwest became such an important part of her artistic life.
In Eternal Horizon, I was drawn to the monumental stone arch, the warmth of the sunlight, and the depth of the surrounding landscape.
O'Keeffe was also drawn to dramatic natural formations and the way light and color can transform a landscape. But where I concentrated on realistic depth, atmosphere, and detail, she often simplified her subjects, emphasizing their shapes, contours, and relationships of color.
I certainly wouldn't call Eternal Horizon an O'Keeffe-style painting. It is simply one of the closest comparisons I could find within the Blakely Art Collection.
And perhaps that's part of the fun of looking at art. Sometimes we discover similarities in places we weren't expecting, even when the artists themselves approached their subjects very differently.
The search also made me realize something else: I don't currently have a painting in the collection that I would immediately describe as distinctly Georgia O'Keeffe-inspired.
Considering her importance in American art, perhaps that's a good reason to keep my eyes open for something new to add to the collection!
In the meantime, you're welcome to explore Eternal Horizon and the other original paintings at Blakely Art Collection.
I'd love to know whether you see a connection—or whether another painting in the collection reminds you of O'Keeffe even more.
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