30 Georgia O'Keeffe Quotes on Art, Nature & Seeing the World Your Own Way
Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986) was an American modernist painter whose bold, semi-abstract depictions of flowers, bones, and desert landscapes earned her recognition as one of the most significant artists of the twentieth century. Raised on a farm in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, she decided at age ten that she would be an artist and pursued her vision with unwavering determination for the next eight decades. She continued painting until failing eyesight forced her to stop in the 1970s, and she lived to 98, spending her final years in the New Mexico desert she loved.
In 1916, the 28-year-old O'Keeffe was teaching art in a small Texas town when a friend showed some of her abstract charcoal drawings to Alfred Stieglitz, the most influential photography and art dealer in America. Stieglitz was so struck by the drawings that he exhibited them at his famous 291 Gallery in New York -- without O'Keeffe's permission. When she stormed into the gallery to demand their removal, Stieglitz talked her into letting the show continue. The encounter launched both a legendary artistic career and one of the most celebrated romantic relationships in art history. O'Keeffe went on to create her signature monumental flower paintings, which she explained by saying she wanted people to really look at flowers the way she did. As she put it: "Nobody sees a flower really; it is so small. We haven't time, and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time." That philosophy of radical attention -- of slowing down to truly see what is right in front of us -- is her enduring gift to art and to life.
Who Was Georgia O’Keeffe?
| Item | Details |
|---|---|
| Born | November 15, 1887 |
| Died | March 6, 1986 (age 98) |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Painter |
| Known For | Large-scale flower paintings, desert landscapes, American modernism |
Key Achievements and Episodes
Flowers That Changed How America Saw Art
In the 1920s, O’Keeffe painted enormous close-up flowers that filled entire canvases. Works like Black Iris (1926) forced viewers to see familiar objects anew. Though critics often read the paintings as erotic, O’Keeffe insisted they were about looking. Jimson Weed sold in 2014 for $44.4 million, the highest price for a painting by a woman at the time, confirming her place among the most important American artists of any era.
New Mexico: Finding Her True Subject
O’Keeffe first visited New Mexico in 1929 and fell in love with the desert. She moved permanently after her husband Stieglitz died in 1946. The bleached bones, red hills, and vast skies became her primary subjects for four decades. Living at Ghost Ranch, she painted until her eyesight failed in the 1970s, dying at age 98 as the undisputed "Mother of American Modernism."
Who Was Georgia O'Keeffe?
Georgia Totto O'Keeffe was born on November 15, 1887, on a wheat farm near Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, the second of seven children in a family of Irish and Hungarian descent. From an early age she knew she wanted to be an artist. By the time she was ten she was receiving private art lessons, and by twelve she had announced with characteristic certainty that she would become a painter. She studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago beginning in 1905 and later at the Art Students League of New York, where she trained under the renowned Impressionist William Merritt Chase. After a period of working as a commercial illustrator and art teacher in Texas and Virginia -- during which she briefly abandoned art altogether, frustrated by the limitations of academic realism -- she encountered the revolutionary ideas of Arthur Wesley Dow, who emphasized personal expression and design over imitation. That encounter changed everything.
In January 1916, a friend named Anita Pollitzer brought a roll of O'Keeffe's abstract charcoal drawings to Alfred Stieglitz, the influential photographer, art dealer, and champion of modernism who ran the groundbreaking gallery "291" in New York. Stieglitz was electrified. "At last, a woman on paper," he reportedly declared. He exhibited the drawings without O'Keeffe's knowledge -- she confronted him and demanded he take them down, but he persuaded her to let them stay. Their correspondence deepened into a passionate artistic and romantic partnership. Stieglitz became O'Keeffe's greatest champion and, in 1924, her husband. Over two decades he created more than three hundred photographs of her -- one of the most extensive portrait series in the history of photography -- and she became the most prominent woman in the American art world.
O'Keeffe's large-scale flower paintings of the 1920s -- enormous, close-up canvases of irises, jimsonweeds, jack-in-the-pulpits, and poppies -- stunned the New York art world and made her famous. She painted flowers so large that even busy New Yorkers would be forced to really see them, to notice the colors, forms, and spaces that people usually rush past. Critics often imposed sexual interpretations on the flowers, a reading O'Keeffe spent her entire life rejecting with fierce irritation. "When people read erotic symbols into my paintings, they're really talking about their own affairs," she said. Meanwhile, beginning in 1929, O'Keeffe made the first of many summer trips to New Mexico, and the stark beauty of the desert transformed her art. She painted the red hills, the vast skies, the adobe churches, and the bleached animal skulls she found scattered across the land -- not as symbols of death, but as enduring forms shaped by wind and time.
After Stieglitz's death in 1946, O'Keeffe moved permanently to New Mexico, dividing her time between a house in the village of Abiquiu and her beloved Ghost Ranch, a property set against towering red and yellow cliffs. There she continued to paint the desert landscape in every season and every light, producing some of her most powerful work: the Pelvis Series, in which she looked through the holes in sun-bleached pelvic bones to frame patches of blue sky, and the Black Place paintings, inspired by a formation of dark gray hills she called "the Gray Hills." She traveled the world in the 1950s and 1960s -- flying above clouds and painting what she saw from airplane windows -- and continued working into her nineties. When her eyesight began to fail in the 1970s, she turned to sculpture and pottery, refusing to stop creating. With the help of a young assistant and companion, Juan Hamilton, she produced her final unassisted oil painting in 1972 and continued making art in other forms until nearly the end of her life. Georgia O'Keeffe died on March 6, 1986, in Santa Fe at the age of ninety-eight, having enjoyed one of the longest and most productive careers in the history of American art. Today she is universally recognized as the Mother of American Modernism, an artist whose singular vision proved that to paint something truly, you must first learn to see it for yourself.
Georgia O'Keeffe Quotes on Art and Painting
O'Keeffe's revolutionary approach to art and painting began in 1915 when she produced a series of abstract charcoal drawings that caught the attention of photographer and gallerist Alfred Stieglitz, who exhibited them at his 291 gallery in New York without her initial knowledge. Her monumental flower paintings, which she began in the mid-1920s, magnified petals and stamens to such a scale that viewers were forced to confront the intricate beauty they normally overlooked. Black Iris III (1926) and Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1 (1932) exemplify her ability to transform botanical subjects into powerful abstract compositions. She worked primarily in oil on canvas, developing a technique of smooth, sensuous surfaces and subtle color gradations that was entirely her own, rejecting the visible brushwork favored by many of her contemporaries.
"I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way -- things I had no words for."
Georgia O'Keeffe by Georgia O'Keeffe, Viking Press, 1976
"I decided I was a very stupid fool not to at least paint as I wanted to."
Georgia O'Keeffe by Georgia O'Keeffe, Viking Press, 1976
"I hate flowers -- I paint them because they're cheaper than models and they don't move."
Quoted in the New York Herald Tribune, 1954
"Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant -- there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing."
Georgia O'Keeffe by Georgia O'Keeffe, Viking Press, 1976
"I don't very much enjoy looking at paintings in general. I know too much about them. I take them apart."
Quoted in Portrait of an Artist: A Biography of Georgia O'Keeffe by Laurie Lisle, 1980
"One can't paint New York as it is, but rather as it is felt."
Quoted in the New York Sun, December 1925
"It was all so far away -- there was quiet and an untouched feel to the country and I could work as I pleased."
Georgia O'Keeffe by Georgia O'Keeffe, Viking Press, 1976, describing her time teaching in Texas
"Filling a space in a beautiful way -- that is what art means to me."
Quoted in Georgia O'Keeffe: Art and Letters, National Gallery of Art, 1987
Georgia O'Keeffe Quotes on Seeing and Perception
O'Keeffe's emphasis on seeing and perception was rooted in her belief that most people move through the world without truly observing it. Her training under Arthur Wesley Dow at Columbia Teachers College in 1914 taught her to think about art in terms of filling space beautifully rather than imitating nature, a lesson that liberated her from academic conventions. She spent hours studying a single flower, bone, or rock formation before painting, believing that sustained attention revealed forms invisible to the casual observer. Her New York cityscape paintings of the late 1920s — including Radiator Building — Night, New York (1927) and City Night (1926) — applied this same intense scrutiny to the urban environment, capturing the geometric poetry of skyscrapers with a clarity that surprised critics who expected only flowers from a female artist.
"Nobody sees a flower really -- it is so small -- we haven't time, and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time."
About Myself, exhibition catalog, An American Place, New York, 1939
"If you ever get near a large flower -- you may be surprised that even the ugly ones are beautiful when seen up close."
About Myself, exhibition catalog, An American Place, New York, 1939
"I decided that if I could paint that flower in a huge scale, you could not ignore its beauty."
Georgia O'Keeffe by Georgia O'Keeffe, Viking Press, 1976
"I wish people were all trees and I think I could enjoy them then."
Letter to Anita Pollitzer, 1916; quoted in Lovingly, Georgia by Clive Giboire (ed.), 1990
"I feel there is something unexplored about woman that only a woman can explore."
Letter to Anita Pollitzer; quoted in Lovingly, Georgia by Clive Giboire (ed.), 1990
"If I could paint the flower exactly as I see it no one would see what I see because I would paint it small like the flower is small. So I said to myself -- I'll paint what I see -- what the flower is to me but I'll paint it big and they will be surprised into taking time to look at it."
About Myself, exhibition statement, An American Place, 1939
"Nothing is less real than realism. Details are confusing. It is only by selection, by elimination, by emphasis that we get at the real meaning of things."
Quoted in Georgia O'Keeffe: Art and Letters, National Gallery of Art, 1987
Georgia O'Keeffe Quotes on Nature, the Desert, and New Mexico
O'Keeffe's deep connection to the New Mexico landscape began during her first visit in 1929 and became permanent after Alfred Stieglitz's death in 1946, when she settled at Ghost Ranch and later purchased a second home in the nearby village of Abiquiú. The stark desert terrain — red cliffs, bleached bones, vast skies, and the ever-present Pedernal mesa — offered her a vocabulary of forms that she explored for nearly fifty years. Her paintings of animal skulls floating against blue skies, such as Ram's Head, White Hollyhock — Hills (1935) and Summer Days (1936), combined the specificity of desert life with a transcendent, almost spiritual quality. She drove thousands of miles across the Southwest in her Ford, camping alone under the stars, at a time when such independence was virtually unheard of for a woman, and her solitary lifestyle in the desert became as iconic as her paintings themselves.
"If you ever go to New Mexico, it will itch you for the rest of your life. It is the kind of itch you will never be able to scratch."
Quoted in Portrait of an Artist: A Biography of Georgia O'Keeffe by Laurie Lisle, 1980
"When I think of death, I only regret that I will not be able to see this beautiful country anymore -- unless the Indians are right and my spirit will walk here after I'm gone."
Quoted in Georgia O'Keeffe: A Life by Roxana Robinson, 1989
"The sky out here is the most wonderful sky in the world. It changes from the softest, gentlest tones to the strongest, most brilliant colors."
Letter from New Mexico; quoted in Lovingly, Georgia by Clive Giboire (ed.), 1990
"I have picked bones where I have found them -- have picked up sea shells and rocks and pieces of wood where there were sea shells and rocks and pieces of wood that I liked. When I found the beautiful white bones in the desert I picked them up and took them home too."
About Myself, exhibition statement, An American Place, 1939
"The bones seem to cut sharply to the center of something that is keenly alive on the desert even though it is vast and empty and untouchable -- and knows no kindness with all its beauty."
Georgia O'Keeffe by Georgia O'Keeffe, Viking Press, 1976
"The color up there is different -- the blue-green of the sage and the mountains, the wildflowers in bloom. It's a different kind of color from any I'd ever seen."
Quoted in Georgia O'Keeffe: A Life by Roxana Robinson, 1989, describing New Mexico
"The sun was like a burning furnace, the land just the same. You rode through it. You walked in it. And it was like a great silence."
Quoted in Portrait of an Artist: A Biography of Georgia O'Keeffe by Laurie Lisle, 1980
"I found I could say things with color and shapes that I had no words for."
Georgia O'Keeffe by Georgia O'Keeffe, Viking Press, 1976
Georgia O'Keeffe Quotes on Independence, Courage, and Living Boldly
O'Keeffe lived to 98, making her one of the longest-lived major artists of the twentieth century, and her biography is itself a testament to the courage and determination reflected in her quotes. She continued painting until macular degeneration robbed her of central vision in the early 1970s, then turned to pottery and sculpture with the help of her assistant and companion Juan Hamilton. In 1970, a major retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art introduced her work to a new generation during the rise of the feminist movement, and she became an icon of female artistic independence. Her estate included over 1,000 works, and the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum opened in Santa Fe in 1997, the first major American museum dedicated solely to a woman artist. Her record-setting auction prices — Jimson Weed sold for $44.4 million in 2014 — confirm her status as one of America's most treasured painters.
"I've been absolutely terrified every moment of my life -- and I've never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do."
Quoted in Georgia O'Keeffe: A Life by Roxana Robinson, 1989
"Where I was born and where and how I have lived is unimportant. It is what I have done with where I have been that should be of interest."
Georgia O'Keeffe by Georgia O'Keeffe, Viking Press, 1976
"I am not going to live my life to please critics."
Quoted in Portrait of an Artist: A Biography of Georgia O'Keeffe by Laurie Lisle, 1980
"You get whatever accomplishment you are willing to declare."
Quoted in Portrait of an Artist: A Biography of Georgia O'Keeffe by Laurie Lisle, 1980
"I am going to be an artist -- I don't really know where I'm going to end up but I'm not going to end up with a ordinary life."
Quoted in Full Bloom: The Art and Life of Georgia O'Keeffe by Hunter Drohojowska-Philp, 2004
"I said to myself, I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me -- shapes and ideas so near to me -- so natural to my way of being and thinking that it hasn't occurred to me to put them down."
Georgia O'Keeffe by Georgia O'Keeffe, Viking Press, 1976
"I have already settled it for myself so flattery and criticism go down the same drain and I am quite free."
Letter to Mabel Dodge Luhan; quoted in Georgia O'Keeffe: Art and Letters, National Gallery of Art, 1987
"It's not enough to be nice in life. You've got to have nerve."
Quoted in Full Bloom: The Art and Life of Georgia O'Keeffe by Hunter Drohojowska-Philp, 2004
Frequently Asked Questions About Georgia O'Keeffe
Why did Georgia O'Keeffe paint flowers so large?
O'Keeffe painted flowers at enormous scale to force viewers to truly see them. She explained that nobody sees a flower really because it is so small and seeing takes time. By enlarging flowers to fill entire canvases, she eliminated the ability to dismiss them as decorative and revealed complex structures, colors, and forms. Her large-scale flower paintings, beginning with Petunia No. 2 in 1924, made her one of the most recognized American artists. These works challenged the art establishment to take her seriously as an artist rather than dismissing her work as merely feminine.
What is Georgia O'Keeffe's connection to New Mexico?
O'Keeffe first visited New Mexico in 1929 and was captivated by the desert landscape. She spent increasingly long periods there, finding inspiration in bleached bones, adobe churches, and dramatic rock formations. After her husband Alfred Stieglitz died in 1946, she moved permanently to New Mexico, settling at Ghost Ranch and later Abiquiu. The landscape became her primary subject for four decades, producing iconic desert paintings. She lived there until her death in 1986 at age 98, becoming inseparable from the New Mexico landscape she immortalized in her art.
Was Georgia O'Keeffe's art about feminism?
O'Keeffe herself resisted feminist interpretations of her art, particularly the reading of her flower paintings as representations of female anatomy — an interpretation first promoted by her husband Alfred Stieglitz and male critics. She insisted she painted flowers because she loved their beauty and wanted others to see them clearly. However, O'Keeffe's career itself was a feminist achievement: she became one of the first women to achieve major recognition in the male-dominated American art world on her own terms, refusing to accept limitations placed on women artists and living with fierce independence.
Related Quote Collections
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- Ansel Adams Quotes — a photographer who shared O'Keeffe's love of the American landscape
- Claude Monet Quotes — an artist devoted to capturing natural beauty with revolutionary vision
- Artemisia Gentileschi Quotes — an earlier pioneering woman artist who defied expectations
- Wassily Kandinsky Quotes — a fellow abstract pioneer who explored the spiritual in art