Georgia O'keeffe Quotes

It's not enough to be nice in life. You've got to have nerve.

Nobody sees a flower - really - it is so small it takes time - we haven't time - and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.

Where I was born and where and how I have lived is unimportant. It is what I have done with where I have been that should be of interest.

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 wish people were all trees and I think I could enjoy them then.

To create one's own world takes courage.

I have things in my head that are not like what anyone taught me — shapes and ideas so near to me, so natural to my way of being and thinking.

You are one of my nicest thoughts.

I'm frightened all the time. But I never let it stop me. Never!

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.

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.

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.

The morning is the best time, there are no people around. My pleasant disposition likes the world with nobody in it.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

The unexplainable thing in nature that makes me feel the world is big fat beyond my understanding – to understand maybe by trying to put it into form. To find the feeling of infinity on the horizon line or just over the next hill.

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

I have done nothing all summer but wait for myself to be myself again.

One day a hummingbird flew in-- It fluttered against the window til I got it down where I could reach it with an open umbrella-- --When I had it in my hand it was so small I couldn't believe I had it--but I could feel the intense life--so intense and so tiny-- ...You were like the humming bird to me... And I am rather inclined to feel that you and I know the best part of one another without spending much time together-- --It is not that I fear the knowing-- It is that I am at this moment willing to let you be what you are to me--it is beautiful and pure and very intensely alive.

I hate flowers.

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

Georgia O’Keeffe moved to rural New Mexico, from which she would sign her letters to the people she loved, “from the faraway nearby.” It was a way to measure physical and psychic geography together. Emotion has its geography, affection is what is nearby, within the boundaries of the self. You can be a thousand miles from the person next to you in bed or deeply invested in the survival of a stranger on the other side of the world.

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

I recall an August afternoon in Chicago in 1973 when I took my daughter, then seven, to see what Georgia O’Keeffe had done with where she had been. One of the vast O’Keeffe ‘Sky Above Clouds’ canvases floated over the back stairs in the Chicago Art Institute that day, dominating what seemed to be several stories of empty light, and my daughter looked at it once, ran to the landing, and kept on looking. "Who drew it," she whispered after a while. I told her. "I need to talk to her," she said finally.

Anyone with any degree of mental toughness ought to be able to exist without the things they like most for a few months at least.

I got half-a-dozen paintings from that shattered plate.

Come quickly. You mustn’t miss the dawn. It will never be just like this again.

I'm getting to like you so tremendously that it sometimes scares me.

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.

I wish so much to go that I almost wish I had never been there.

It hadn't occurred to me that my mother would die. Until she was dying, the thought had never entered my mind. She was monolithic and insurmountable, the keeper of my life. She would grow old and still work in the garden. This image was fixed in my mind, like one of the memories from her childhood that I made her explain so intricately that I remembered it as if it were mine. She would be old and beautiful like the black-and-white photo of Georgia O'Keeffe I'd once sent her. I held fast to this image for the first couple of weeks after we left the Mayo Clinic, and then, once she was admitted to the hospice wing of the hospital in Duluth, that image unfurled, gave way to the others, more modest and true. I imagined my mother in October; I wrote the scene in my mind. And then the one of my mother in August and another in May. Each day that passed, another month peeled away.

I decided I was a very stupid fool not to at least paint as I wanted to ... I found that I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way-- things I had no words for.

Hack, hack, hack. I wouldn't pay twenty-five cents to spit on a Georgia O'Keeffe painting. And I think she's a horrible person, too. I know her...So arrogant, so sure of herself. I'm sure she's carrying a dildo in her purse.

It is only by selection, by elimination, and by emphasis that we get at the real meaning of things.

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 said to myself 'I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me--shapes and idea so near to my-- so natural to my way of being and thinking that it hasn't occurred to me to put them down.' I decided to start anew to strip away what I had been taught...

You get whatever accomplishment you are willing to declare.

(About Georgia O'Keeffe:) 'The city men.' 'The men.' 'They.' The words crop up again and again as this astonishingly aggressive woman tells us what was on her mind when she was making her astonishingly aggressive paintings. It was those city men who stood accused of sentimentalizing her flowers: "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.

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 do not like the idea of happyness — it is too momentary — I would say that I was always busy and interested in something — interest has more meaning to me than the idea of happyness.

When I look over the photographs Stieglitz took of me-some of them more than sixty years ago-I wonder who that person is. It is as if in my one life I have lived many lives. If the person in the photographs were living in this world today, she would be quite a different person-but it doesn't matter-Stieglitz photographed her then.

My pleasant disposition likes the world with nobody in it. (Life, March 1, 1968)

To see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.

Georgia O’Keeffe said, “It is only by selection, by elimination, and by emphasis that we get at the real meaning of things.” Choosing what to select, what to eliminate, and what to emphasize depends not only on the idea but on the audience.

I am divided between my man and a life with him---and some thing of the outdoors---of your world---that is in my blood---and that I know I will never get rid of--- I have to get along with my divided self the best way I can---

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.

RE: Lake George from a book by Lord. That's all I know. "There is something so perfect about the mountains and the lake and the trees.... sometimes I want to tear it all to pieces

Living out here has just meant happiness. Sometimes I think I'm half-mad with love for this place.

…and I’m disgusted with dreams now — I want real things — live people to take hold of — to see — and to talk to — music that makes holes in the sky.

My friend Doris Bry says now that I’ve ruined her spelling because I misspell with such confidence.

Someone else’s vision will never be as good as you own vision of yourself. Live and die with it, because in the end, that’s all you have. Lose it and lose yourself and everything else.

Georgia O'Keeffe wrote, "I long ago came to the conclusion that even if I could put down accurately the thing I saw and enjoyed, it would not give the observer the kind of feeling it gave me. I had to create an equivalent for what I felt about what I was looking at ― not copy it." Thus the images of art are no more a direct reflection of the feelings, concepts, and sensations from which they arose than are a scientist's formulas direct expressions of his thoughts. All public languages are forms of translation.

Some women fight and others do not. Like so many successful guerrillas in the war between the sexes, Georgia O’Keeffe seems to have been equipped early with an immutable sense of who she was and a fairly clear understanding that she would be required to prove

A literary expert friend once told me that the way to teach your child to love and respect reading is not to read to them, but rather to refuse to allow yourself to be interrupted while you're reading.

I said to myself, ‘I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me’…I decided to start anew—to strip away what I had been taught—to accept as true my own thinking.” —Georgia O’Keeffe

Her secret? Loving her own life. Finding the things that came her way of immense interest and animating them. No matter what was going on, it was great to be her, starring in her own true-life adventure.

The skulls were there and I could say something with them. To me they are as beautiful as anything I know. To me they are strangely more living than the animals walking around -- hair, eyes and all, with the tails switching. The bones seem to cut sharply to the center of something that is keenly alive on the desert even though it is vast and empty and untouchable-- and knows no kindness with all its beauty.

As one chooses between the country and the human being, the country becomes much more wonderful.

We stood surrounded by orchids that would make Georgia O’Keeffe teary-eyed and most lesbians distracted.

O'Keefe is the poster child for doing exactly what you want, in the service of an abiding passion.

I've always been absolutely terrified every moment of my life – and I've never let it stop me from doing a single thing I wanted to do.

to Russell Vernon Hunter New York Spring 1932 My dear Vernon Hunter Your letter gives me such a vivid picture of some thing I love in space — love almost as passionately as I can love a person — that I am almost tempted to pack my little bag and go — but I will not go to it right this morning — No matter how much I love it — There is some thing in me that must finish jobs once started — when I can —. So I am here — and what you write of me is there The cockscomb is here too — I put it in much cold water and it came to life from a kind of flatness it had in the box when I opened it — tho it was very beautiful as it lay in the box a bit wilted when I opened it —. I love it — Thank you. I must confess to you — that I even have the desire to go into old Mexico — that I would have gone — undoubtedly — if it were only myself that I considered — You are wise — so wise — in staying in your own country that you know and love — I am divided between my man and a life with him — and some thing of the outdoors — of your world — that is in my blood — and that I know I will never get rid of — I have to get along with my divided self the best way I can —. So give my greetings to the sun and the sky — and the wind — and the dry never ending land —Sincerely Georgia O'Keeffe

see: a man reach inside cattle and pull out their kidneys with his bare hands, then drop the kidneys down a metal chute, over and over again, as each animal passes by him; a stainless steel rack of tongues; Whizzards peeling meat off decapitated heads, picking them almost as clean as the white skulls painted by Georgia O’Keeffe. We wade through blood that’s ankle deep and that pours down drains into huge vats below us. As we approach the start of the line, for the first time I hear the steady pop, pop, pop of live animals being stunned.

You paint from your subject, not what you see…I rarely paint anything I don’t know very well. It was surprising to me to see how many people separate the objective from the abstract. Objective painting is not good painting unless it is good in the abstract sense. A hill or tree cannot make a good painting just because it is a hill or a tree. It is lines and colors put together so that they say something. For me that is the very basis of painting. The abstraction is often the most definite form for the intangible thing in myself that I can only clarify in paint.

Anyway, what do women grab when they’re nervous and sitting at their desks? Do they slip their hands inside their panties? What a distracting thought. Just the word panty is distracting. I love that word; it implies so much. I love how women look in panties, how they’re flat in the front. I’m thirty-five, but sometimes it’s still this beautiful amazing shock to me that women don’t have penises. They just have this lovely little mound of hair and then this tucked away glorious hole. Hole. Wait. Hole sounds vulgar. Is passageway better? Pretty envelope? Georgia O’Keeffe flower? Pussy? Pussy is good. I like the word pussy. Tucked away beautiful pussy. I wish I could put my face in one right now and sing out, “I love you!

I BOUGHT THIS house for the door. The house itself was a ruin, but I had to have that door. Over the years, I’ve painted it many times, all different ways: abstract, representational, blue, black, brown. I’ve painted it in the hot green of summer, in the dead of winter, clouds rushing past it, a lone yellow leaf drifting down. I painted the door open only once. Just before he died. In every picture after, it was closed.

Should Michelangelo have always been calm, with so much talent and passion bursting through him? Or Georgia O'Keeffe, or Saint Teresa? We often find a common theme in biographies of talented people: In contrast to the brilliance of their art, their personalities were violent and their lives turbulent. The forces called violent and turbulent here are not in contrast to their brilliance; they were deeply felt, totally natural effects of a passionate life. How quickly we label the show of emotion as negative, particularly in women. How quick we are to label a woman's passion ugly, over the top, too much.

Frieda was very special,” O’Keeffe recalls. “I can remember very clearly the first time I ever saw her, standing in a doorway, with her hair all frizzed out, wearing a cheap red calico dress that looked as though she’d just wiped out the frying pan with it. She was not thin, and not young, but there was something radiant and wonderful about her.

Nobody sees a flower—really—it is so small it takes time—we haven’t time—and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time. GEORGIA O’KEEFFE

What remains indisputable, however, is her genius for navigating the waters of her own vision, for discovering it, nurturing it, and never abandoning it.

A life is built of lies and magic, illusions bedded down with dreams. And in the end what haunts us most is the recollection of what we failed to see.

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.

Each time I leave here [Ghost Ranch] it is like a Death, and each time that I return it is a Birth.

This [Ghost Ranch] is my kind of world. The kind of things one sees in cities . . . well, you know, it's better to look out the window at the sage.

I don't see why we ever think of what others think of what we do—isn't it enough just to express yourself.

To see takes time.

Cindy Sherman, Frida Kahlo, Georgia O’Keeffe, Judy Chicago, and Barbara Kruger are just some of the many women who broke old conventions and altered norms in modern art.

I never did learn to spell. My friend Doris Bry says now that I’ve ruined her spelling because I misspell with such confidence.

The air just makes you feel free—free from everything . . . I don’t seem to be wanting people—just space. —GEORGIA O’KEEFFE, letter to Alfred Stieglitz, October 9, 1916

I dip the very tip of my brush into the blue. I want to taste it. I want the thrill of color moving inside me again. The brush floats near the canvas. Where to start? Where to start? A stroke there, but the moment I’ve made it, it’s wrong.

I know that western sky. Sometimes when I'm alone painting, a blind lifts and I let my mind drift back. I remember walking out into the red sun in Canyon until the night fell. I'd lie down on the scorched hardness of the desert floor, looking up at the stars raining down like small silver bullets into me. It was all I wanted then – to feel that roar of the infinite that exists within our finite selves. At times it seemed unbearable – that hunger I felt once – like the edges of my skin could not contain it. I miss that.

Living is experimenting. — And if I do experiment it is with a passion at white heat — experiment not in cold blood — just mind & body — heart — with All of Me. And what is the experiment? — You know what it is as well as I do. — You yearn for someone to understand every heartbeat of yours — to take every heartbeat — every thought — conscious — & otherwise — for what they are. — And you well know no one can understand so fully — but some come nearer to it than others — some very near — The yearn goes out — whether you wish it or not — to others who are feeling as you do.

(About Georgia O'Keeffe) At the Art Students League in New York one of her fellow students advised her that, since he would be a great painter and she would end up teaching painting in a girs' school, any work of hers was less important than modeling for him. Another painted over her work to show her how the Impressionists did trees. She had not before heard how the Impressionists did trees and she did not much care. At twenty-four she left all those opinions behind and went for the first time to live in Texas, where there were no trees to paint and no one to tell her how not to paint them. In Texas there was only the horizon she craved. In Texas she had her sister Claudia with her for a while, and in the late afternoons they would walk away from town and toward the horizon and watch the evening star come out. "That evening star fascinated me," she wrote. "It was in some way very exciting to me. My sister had a gun, and as we walked she would throw bottles into the air and shoot as many as she could before they hit the ground. I had nothing but to walk into nowhere and the wide sunset space with the star. Ten watercolors were made from that star.

The only bill not overdue was for my health insurance. That’s because I don’t have any. Never have. Based on the figure the federal government claims is the average monthly cost of health coverage for someone like me who is self-employed, I’ve saved about $200,000 since opening Spirits in Clay. I

What Is Art?150 I’m beginning to think that maybe I’m exceedingly vulgar — and the funny thing about it is — I don’t understand — I get the shapes in my head — can never make them exactly like I want to — but there is a fascination about trying — And then too — there is the delicious probability that I don’t know anything about what Art is — So it’s fun to make the stuff —

I realised 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. This was one of the best times in my life. There was no one around to look at what I was doing — no one interested — no one to say anything about it one way or another. I was alone and singularly free, working on my own, unknown — no one to satisfy but myself.

Due to his unique position at the Met, John had access to the vaults that housed the museum’s entire photography collection, much of it never seen by the public. John’s specialty was Victorian photography, which he knew I was partial to as well. He invited Robert and me to come and see the work firsthand. There were flat files from floor to ceiling, metal shelves and drawers containing vintage prints of the early masters of photography: Fox Talbot, Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand, and Thomas Eakins. Being allowed to lift the tissues from these photographs, actually touch them and get a sense of the paper and the hand of the artist, made an enormous impact on Robert. He studied them intently—the paper, the process, the composition, and the intensity of the blacks. “It’s really all about light,” he said. John saved the most breathtaking images for last. One by one, he shared photographs forbidden to the public, including Stieglitz’s exquisite nudes of Georgia O’Keeffe. Taken at the height of their relationship, they revealed in their intimacy a mutual intelligence and O’Keeffe’s masculine beauty. As Robert concentrated on technical aspects, I focused on Georgia O’Keeffe as she related to Stieglitz, without artifice. Robert was concerned with how to make the photograph, and I with how to be the photograph.

To Anita Pollitzer Canyon, Texas 11 September 1916 Tonight I walked into the sunset — to mail some letters — the whole sky — and there is so much of it out here — was just blazing — and grey blue clouds were rioting all through the hotness of it — and the ugly little buildings and windmills looked great against it. But some way or other I didn't seem to like the redness much so after I mailed the letters I walked home — and kept on walking — The Eastern sky was all grey blue — bunches of clouds — different kinds of clouds — sticking around everywhere and the whole thing — lit up — first in one place — then in another with flashes of lightning — sometimes just sheet lightning — and sometimes sheet lightning with a sharp bright zigzag flashing across it —. I walked out past the last house — past the last locust tree — and sat on the fence for a long time — looking — just looking at the lightning — you see there was nothing but sky and flat prairie land — land that seems more like the ocean than anything else I know — There was a wonderful moon — Well I just sat there and had a great time all by myself — Not even many night noises — just the wind — I wondered what you are doing — It is absurd the way I love this country — Then when I came back — it was funny — roads just shoot across blocks anywhere — all the houses looked alike — and I almost got lost — I had to laugh at myself — I couldnt tell which house was home — I am loving the plains more than ever it seems — and the SKY — Anita you have never seen SKY — it is wonderful — Pat.

500In Smart Girls, Gifted Women, Barbara Kerr explores the common experiences of girls who grew into strong women. She studied the adolescent years of Marie Curie, Gertrude Stein, Eleanor Roosevelt, Margaret Mead, Georgia O’Keeffe, Maya Angelou and Beverly Sills, and she found that they had in common time by themselves, the ability to fall in love with an idea, a refusal to acknowledge gender limitations and what she called “protective coating.” None of them were popular as adolescents and most stayed separate from their peers, not by choice, but because they were rejected. Ironically, this very rejection gave them a protected space in which they could develop their uniqueness. Many strong girls have similar stories: They were socially isolated and lonely in adolescence. Smart girls are often the girls most rejected by peers. Their strength is a threat and they are punished for being different. Girls who are unattractive or who don’t worry about their appearance are scorned. This isolation is often a blessing because it allows girls to develop a strong sense of self. Girls who are isolated emerge from adolescence more independent and self- sufficient than girls who have been accepted by others.

Georgia, come!” she cries, and I feel a surge of joy. The trees ring with her voice. The moment shatters, so beautiful and precious, the shed pieces of one moment giving way to the next, and I understand that this is where life dwells—in the unregistered time between moments when you are filled with no thought, no awareness, just a garden, ancient sunlight, your sister’s voice. I

He did not give me greatness, but his faith in my early work gave me the space to achieve it.

from that moment on art would become this for me—singular, indissoluble—the one thing that could rein in the chaos and fear to transmute an untenable world to some

art is exactly this: making what’s unseen but all around us, visible. Having that sort of faith.

from that moment on art would become this for me—singular, indissoluble—the one thing that could rein in the chaos and fear to transmute an untenable world to some form of beauty even as that world fell away.

You have not been overtaught, and most of what you’ve been taught, you’ve rejected, and so the essence of what you are and how you feel comes through in your best work.

Georgia O’Keeffe, the famous artist from the American Southwest, expressed this same courageous attitude toward fear in another way: “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.

I have done nothing all summer but wait for myself to be myself again —