Red Canna

Red Canna, 1920. Georgia O'Keeffe. Watercolor on paper, 19 x 13". Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven CT.

"When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it's your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else. Most people in the city rush around so, they have no time to see a flower. I want them to see it whether they want to or not." - Georgia O'Keeffe.

Georgia O'Keefe's Hands

Ghost Ranch, 1966

Holding Eliot Porter's Rock, Abiquiu, 1966

Ghost Ranch, 1966

Holding a book by Leonard Baskin, bedroom, Abiquiu, 1966

Most of us have seen the beautiful photographs that Alfred Stieglitz took of Georgia in the early part of the 20th century. I thought it would be fun to show those same lovely hands at an older age. These photos were taken in 1966 as part of a Life Magazine story by John Loengard.

I especially like the ones with the bones... she collected a lot of bones from the desert to take back to New York and paint. She said she wanted to to somehow take a little bit of New Mexico with her (she spent her summers painting there during the 1930s and 40's). Georgia O'Keeffe said they never represented death to her - on the contrary, they were very lively. She loved the shapes of the bones, especially in relation to the sky.

**photos taken from the book, Image and Imagination: Georgia O'Keeffe by John Loengard - 1994.

Evening Star V, 1917. Watercolor, 9 x 12 in.

'...The evening star would be high in the sunset sky when it was still broad daylight. That evening star fascinated me. It was in some way very exciting to me. My sister had a gun, and as w walked she would throw bottles into the air and shoot as many as she could before they hit the ground. I had nothing but to walk into nowhere and the wide sunset space with the star. ' - Georgia O'Keeffe.

Quote taken from the book: Georgia O'Keeffe, (1976) published by Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, Inc.

The Lawrence Tree

By Georgia O'Keeffe, 1929. Oil on canvas, 30 x 40 in.

I love this painting, it shows a calm light one might feel sitting on a porch in the evening, enjoying the moment, taking in the night sky. I wonder how often one might get a chance to experience such a moment in this busy computer age we live in today?

"I spent several weeks up at the Lawrence ranch that summer. There was a long weathered carpenter's bench under the tall tree in front of the little old house that Lawrence had lived in there. I often lay on that bench looking up into the tree - past the trunk and up into the branches. It was particularly fine at night with the stars above the tree." (Georgia O'Keeffe)