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
summer morning memories
On the way I stood a moment looking out across the marshes with tall cattails, a patch of water, more marsh, then the woods with a few birch trees shining white at the edge on beyond. In the darkness it all looked just like I felt. Wet and swampy and gloomy, very gloomy. In the morning I painted it. My memory of it is that it was probably my best painting that summer
morning people solitude
The morning is the best time, there are no people around. My pleasant disposition likes the world with nobody in it.
summer morning flower
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.
american-artist arts courage create takes
To create one's own world in any of the arts takes courage.
american-artist cheaper hate models paint
I hate flowers. I only paint them because they're cheaper than models and they don't move.
except
He was nothing but a tool. ... He had no thought, no part in the painting, except that he could do what I told him to do.
american-artist anyone natural near occurred shapes taught
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.
absolutely courage life moment single terrified
I've been absolutely terrified every moment of my life -- and I've never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do.
anyone head ideas natural near occurred shapes taught thinking
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.
artist paint
Since I cannot sing, I paint.
knowing lakes long
I find that I have painted my life, things happening in my life - without knowing. After painting the shell and shingle many times, I did a misty landscape of the mountain across the lake, and the mountain became the shape of the shingle - the mountain I saw out my window, the shingle on the table in my room. I did not notice that they were alike for a long time after they were painted.
ideas done shapes
I realized that I had things in my head not like what I had been taught - not like what I had seen - shapes and ideas so familiar to me that it hadn't occurred to me to put them down. I decided to stop painting, to put away everything I had done, and to start to say the things that were my own.
skills trying painting
I am trying with all my skill to do a painting that is all woman, as well as all of me.
self should-have vision
Someone else's vision will never be as good as your own vision of your self. Live and die with it 'cause in the end it's all you have. Lose it and you lose yourself and everything else. I should have listened to myself.