Georgia O'Keeffe

The artist I chose to focus on in my creative domain is Georgia O’Keeffe. Georgia O’Keeffe was born on November 15, 1887 near Sun Prairie, Wisconsin (Wikipedia Georgia O’Keeffe). She knew at a young age that she wanted to become an artist and she was so talented that she was recognized and received private instruction, and at age eighteen she began formal studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (Messinger 7). She attended schools in New York and started teaching in South Carolina in 1915, however she gave up teaching and she moved back to New York at the age of thirty-one and devoted her life to her own art (Messinger 7). She met her husband Alfred Stieglitz a famous photographer, and he is the soul reason she moved to New York in the first place, he was the single most important figure in her life especially with him influencing her art the way he did (Messinger 8).

O’Keeffe’s early work included charcoal and watercolor and what made her breakthrough towards modern abstraction (Messinger 13). Being an abstract artist she experimented a lot with shading and just trying new things, that is what abstraction means, doing effects no one else would even think of doing, and making them well known as she would continue on her career. O’Keeffe’s work in New York helped her tremendously as she only worked with oil and was surrounded by photographers and artists making her way towards her fame (Messinger 24).  

 

Above is one of Georgia’s most famous and well recognized paintings called Cow’s Skull: Red, White, and Blue. This painting studies the single bone isolation from its natural environment (Messinger 72). Although this is not part of her New Mexico phase, even though it looks like that is where it would come from, this painting was actually from Lake George in the fall of 1931. The cow’s skull was one of the several bones that she had shipped back west the year before with the intention of painting them. She loved the jagged edges, worn surfaces, and pale color essence of the desert (Messinger 72).

On March 6, 1986 Georgia died in Santa Fe, New Mexico at the age of 98. What she left behind was a legacy that would be remembered for many years to come (Messinger 9). The legacy she left shows just how important it is to follow your dreams along with maybe doing something a little daring and abstract, as long as you are truly passionate about your activity, there is no shame in trying new things.

Works Cited

Messinger, Lisa Mintz. Georgia O'Keeffe. New York, NY: Thames and Hudson, 1988.

 "Georgia O'Keeffe." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Web. 08 Apr. 2014.

URL Cited

wikipedia.org/wiki/Cow's_Skull:_Red,_White,_and_Blue