Georgia O'Keeffe

Hello, my name is Georgia O'Keeffe, and I am known as one of America’s most important artists. My story begins on a big, windy farm in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, where I was born on November 15th, 1887. Growing up on the prairie meant I was surrounded by huge, open spaces. The sky seemed to go on forever, and the land was a carpet of grasses and wildflowers. I spent hours just looking at the world around me. I would stare at the petals of a flower, noticing every curve and shade of color. I loved watching the clouds change shape as they drifted across the bright blue sky. Everything I saw was full of wonder, from the simple shape of a leaf to the powerful line of the horizon. By the time I was ten years old, I had looked at the world so closely and loved it so much that I knew exactly what I wanted to be when I grew up: I was going to be an artist.

To become an artist, I knew I had to study. In 1905, I went to art school in Chicago, and then I moved to New York City to continue my studies in 1907. In my classes, the teachers taught me how to paint things to look exactly as they appeared in real life. I learned the rules of drawing and painting, but something inside me felt like it was not enough. I didn't just want to copy what I saw; I wanted to paint the special feeling a place or an object gave me. A wonderful teacher named Arthur Wesley Dow helped me understand this feeling. He taught me that art wasn't about perfectly copying nature. Instead, he said art was about filling a space in a beautiful way with lines, shapes, and colors. That idea changed everything for me. Around 1916, I was teaching art in Texas, where the land was vast and empty. The huge sky and wide-open landscape inspired me to create simple but powerful drawings using only black charcoal, focusing on the shapes and feelings of the world around me.

My life changed when a friend took some of my charcoal drawings to New York City without telling me. In 1916, she showed them to a famous photographer and art gallery owner named Alfred Stieglitz. He saw something special in them right away and told my friend, “At last, a woman on paper!” He loved my art so much that he decided to show it in his well-known gallery. I soon moved back to New York, where Alfred became my biggest supporter. He encouraged me to follow my own unique way of seeing the world, and in 1924, we were married. The city was a new inspiration for me. I painted the tall, powerful skyscrapers that seemed to touch the clouds. But I also started painting the subjects I am most famous for today: giant, close-up flowers. I painted them so big that you couldn't ignore them. I wanted busy people in the city to stop for just a moment and truly see the incredible beauty hidden inside a simple flower.

As much as I enjoyed the energy of New York, my heart truly belonged to the American Southwest. My first visit to New Mexico in 1929 felt like a homecoming. The moment I arrived, I knew I had found the place where I belonged. The landscape was unlike anything I had ever seen before. The desert light was so clear and bright, and it made the colors of the cliffs seem to glow with red, yellow, and orange. The beauty there was stark and simple. I spent my summers there, painting the things I found in the desert. I painted the sun-bleached animal bones I discovered on my walks, not because they were sad, but because I saw beauty in their smooth, white shapes against the blue sky. I painted a flat-topped mountain called the Pedernal over and over again because I loved its strong, steady form. After Alfred passed away, I made New Mexico my permanent home in 1949, living and painting at my houses at Ghost Ranch and in the village of Abiquiú.

I lived to be 98 years old, and I spent my life trying to share the way I saw the world. I hope that when people look at my paintings, they take a moment to notice the wonderful and beautiful things all around them, whether it’s in a simple flower, a smooth stone, or a vast desert landscape. There is so much beauty in the world if you just take the time to look closely. Today, many of my paintings are gathered at the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where people can come and see the world through my eyes.