Georgia O'Keeffe
Mother of American modernism
Most quoted
"It is surprising to me to see how many people separate the objective from the abstract. Objective painting is not good painting unless it is good in the abstract sense. A hill or tree cannot make a good painting just because it is a hill or a tree. It is lines and colors put together so that they say something."
— from Letter, 1930
"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. I decided to start anew, to strip away what I had been taught."
— from Letter, 1915
"I made you take time to look at what I saw and when you took time to really notice my flower you hung all your own associations with flowers on my flower and you write about my flower as if I think and see what you think and see of the flower – and I don't."
— from Letter, 1939
All quotes by Georgia O'Keeffe (355)
I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way - things I had no words for.
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.
I have been surprised at the number of women who have told me they have changed their minds about me after seeing me.
I wish people were all to be like flowers, that they would just open up and be beautiful.
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.
I decided that if I could paint that flower in a huge scale, you could not ignore its beauty.
I had to create an equivalent for what I felt about what I was looking at—not copy it.
I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day.
I believe it is important to be true to oneself and to follow one's own path.
To create one's own world in any of the arts takes courage.
I have been to the desert. It is a place of great beauty and great emptiness.
I am not a woman who is interested in fashion. I am interested in what I wear.
I have always been a solitary person. I like to be alone.
I have always been interested in the way things grow and change.
I have always been interested in the way light falls on things.
I have always been interested in the way things are put together.
I have always been interested in the way things feel.
I have always been interested in the way things smell.
I have always been interested in the way things sound.
I have always been interested in the way things taste.
Contemporaries of Georgia O'Keeffe
Other Visual Artss born within 50 years of Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986).