Georgia O’Keeffe was considered as the pioneer of American modernism. Both her art and her life has captured the hearts of the art world for many decades.
Born on dairy farm in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin on November 15th, 1887 O’Keeffe was encouraged by her parents to pursue her at from a very young age.
Although she studied art formally at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1905 and later at the Art Students League in New York she found little inspiration in the way that formal art was thought and in particular the emphasis on realism.
Rather than being tied to any particular style or art movement she preferred to forge her own path and focused on more abstract work that was centered around flowers and landscapes.
Here are some interesting quotes by Georgia O’Keeffe on her life and her art:
Georgia O’Keeffe Quotes
“I have already settled it for myself so flattery and criticism go down the same drain and I am quite free.”
– Georgia O’Keeffe
“I’ve been absolutely terrified every moment of my life and I’ve never let it keep me from doing a single thing that I wanted to do.”
– Georgia O’Keeffe
“I think it’s so foolish for people to want to be happy. Happy is so momentary–you’re happy for an instant and then you start thinking again. Interest is the most important thing in life; happiness is temporary, but interest is continuous.”
– Georgia O’Keeffe
“Filling a space in a beautiful way – that is what art means to me.”
– Georgia O’Keeffe
“I often painted fragments of things because it seemed to make my statement as well as or better than the whole could.”
– Georgia O’Keeffe
“Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing and keeping the unknown always beyond you.”
– Georgia O’Keeffe
“I decided to start anew, to strip away what I had been taught.”
– Georgia O’Keeffe
“Nothing is less real than realism. Details are confusing. It is only by selection, by elimination, by emphasis, that we get at the real meaning of things.“
– Georgia O’Keeffe
“The morning is the best time, there are no people around. My pleasant disposition likes the world with nobody in it”
– Georgia O’Keeffe
“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.”
– Georgia O’Keeffe
“One cannot 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.”
– Georgia O’Keeffe
“I often painted fragments of things because it seemed to make my statement as well as or better than the whole could.”
– Georgia O’Keeffe
“I can’t live where I want to, I can’t go where I want to go, I can’t do what I want to, I can’t even say what I want to. I decided I was a very stupid fool not to at least paint as I wanted to.”
– Georgia O’Keeffe
“I wish people were all trees and I think I could enjoy them then.”
– Georgia O’Keeffe
“I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way… things I had no words for.”
– Georgia O’Keeffe
“I have already settled it for myself so flattery and criticism go down the same drain and I am quite free.”
– Georgia O’Keeffe
“It’s not enough to be nice in life. You’ve got to have nerve.”
– Georgia O’Keeffe
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