Georgia O'Keeffe
Georgia O'Keeffe
Georgia Totto O'Keeffewas an American artist. She is best known for her paintings of enlarged flowers, New York skyscrapers, and New Mexico landscapes. O'Keeffe has been recognized as the "Mother of American modernism"...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPainter
Date of Birth15 November 1887
CitySun Prairie, WI
CountryUnited States of America
art flower appreciate
It was in the 1920s, when nobody had time to reflect, that I saw a still-life painting with a flower that was perfectly exquisite, but so small you really could not appreciate it.
fun men thinking
The clean clear colours were in my head. But one day as I looked at the brown burned wood of the Shanty, I thought 'I can paint one of those dismal-coloured paintings like the men. I think just for fun I will try - all low-toned and dreary with the tree besides the door.' In my next show, 'The Shanty' went up. The men seemed to approve of it. They seemed to think that maybe I was beginning to paint ... that was my only low-toned dismal-coloured painting.
making-love photograph modeling
We'd make love. Afterwards he would take photographs of me. (On modeling for Alfred Stieglitz)
flower america can-not
One can not be an American by going about saying that one is an American. It is necessary to feel America, like America, love America and then work.
giving world painting
My painting is what I have to give back to the world for what the world gives to me.
sweet desire world
I'm glad I want everything in the world - good and bad - bitter and sweet - I want it all.
flower artist people
I realized that were I to paint flowers 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.
sweet wall ambition
That nervous energy that makes people like you and I want and go after everything in the world - bump our heads on all the hard walls and scratch our hands on all the briars - but it makes living great - doesn't it - I'm glad I want everything in the world - good and bad - bitter and sweet - I want it all and a lot of it too
artist ideas mind
I don't really know where I got my artists idea. The scraps of what I remember do not explain to me where it came from. I only know that by this time it was definitely settled in my mind.
stupid school shapes
School and things that painters have taught me even keep me from painting as I want to. I decided I was a very stupid fool not to be at least paint as I wanted to and say what I wanted to when I painted as that seemed to be the only thing I could do that didn't concern anybody but myself ... I found that I could say things with colour and shapes that I couldn't say in any other way things that I had no words for.
heart blind born
We feared the heartlessness of human beings, all of whom are born blind, few of whom ever learn to see.
nature flower garden
If you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it's your world for a moment.
interesting imagine knows
One works because I suppose it is the most interesting thing one knows to do. The days one works are the best days. On the other days one is hurrying through the other things one imagines one has to do to keep one's life going...
quilts memories light
My first memory is of light -- the brightness of light -- light all around.