Georgia O'Keeffe Low Quotations

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.

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.

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.

If you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it's your world for a moment.

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 associations with flowers on my flower and you write about my flower as if I think and see what you think and see—and I don't.

Singing has always seemed to me the most perfect means of expression. It is so spontaneous. And after singing, I think the violin. Since I cannot sing, I paint.

I often painted fragments of things because it seemed to make my statement as well as or better than the whole could.

I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way - things I had no words for.

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 don't very much enjoy looking at paintings in general. I know too much about them. I take them apart.

One can't paint New York as it is, but rather as it is felt.

Marks on paper are free - free speech - press - pictures all go together I suppose.

I had to create an equivalent for what I felt about what I was looking at - not copy it.

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 look at a flower. I want them to see it whether they want to or not.

I feel there is something unexplored about woman that only a woman can explore.

I decided to start anew, to strip away what I had been taught.

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.

Anyone who doesn't feel the crosses simply doesn't get that country.

The days you work are the best days.

I know now that most people are so closely concerned with themselves that they are not aware of their own individuality, I can see myself, and it has helped me to say what I want to say in paint.

I know I can not paint a flower, I can not paint the sun on the desert on a bright summer morning but maybe in terms of paint colour I can convey to you my experience of the flower or the experience that makes the flower of significance to me at that particular time.

A flower touches everyone's heart.

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 the time to look at it-I will make even busy New Yorkers take time to see what I see of flowers.

Whether the flower or the color is the focus I do not know. I do know the flower is painted large to convey my experience with the flower - and what is my experience if it is not the color?

I believe I would rather have Stieglitz like something - anything I had done - than anyone else I know.

You write about my flower as if I think and see what you think and see of the flower - and I don't.

It was all so far away - there was quiet and an untouched feel to the country and I could work as I pleased.

A flower is relatively small... Still in a way-nobody sees a flower-so I said to myself-I'll paint it big.

I decided that if I could paint that flower in a huge scale, you could not ignore its beauty.

I hate flowers - I paint them because they're cheaper than models and they don't move.