There are people who have made me see shapes — and others I thought of a great deal, even people I have loved, who make me see nothing. I have painte… - Georgia O'Keeffe

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There are people who have made me see shapes — and others I thought of a great deal, even people I have loved, who make me see nothing. I have painted portraits that to me are almost photographic. I remember hesitating to show the paintings, they looked so real to me. But they have passed into the world as abstractions - no one seeing what they are.

English
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About Georgia O'Keeffe

Georgia Totto O'Keeffe (15 November 1887 – 6 March 1986) was an American modernist painter. She was known for her paintings of enlarged flowers, New York skyscrapers, and New Mexico landscapes. O'Keeffe has been called the "Mother of American modernism". O'Keeffe is a major figure in American art. She is chiefly known for paintings in which she synthesizes abstraction and representation in paintings of flowers, rocks, shells, animal bones and landscapes. Her paintings present crisply contoured forms that are replete with subtle tonal transitions of varying colors, and she often transformed her subject matter into powerful abstract images.

Also Known As

Pen Names: Okeef, Georgia Okeefe, Georgia O'Keeffe, Georgia Totto Stieglitz, Georgia O'Keeffe
Alternative Names: Mrs. Alfred Stieglitz Georgia O'Keeffe Stieglitz Alfred, Mrs. Stieglitz Georgia Totto O'Keeffe Georgia O' Keeffe Georgia Stieglitz O'Keeffe Georgia O’Keeffe
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Additional quotes by Georgia O'Keeffe

..About my work Howard – I always have two opinions – one is my way of seeing it for myself – and for myself I am never satisfied – never really – I almost always fail – always I think – now next time I can do it – Maybe that is part of what keeps one working – I can also look at myself – by that I mean my work from the point of view of the looking public – and that is the way I look at it when I think of showing. I have always first had a show for myself – and made up my mind – then after that it doesn't matter to me very much what anyone else say – good or bad.

Those perilous climbings [with her sister Claudia, in the Palo Duro Canyon, 1916] were frightening, but it was wonderful to me and not like anything I had known before. The fright of the day was still with me in the night and I would often dream that the foot of my bed rose straight up into the air — then just as it was to fall I would wake up. Many drawings came from days like that, and later some oil paintings.

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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 colours put together so that they say something. For me that is the very basis of painting. The abstraction is often the most definite form for the intangible thing in myself that I can only clarify in paint. … I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way — things I had no words for.

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