I Love Georgia O'Keeffe

I love northern New Mexico! I've spent a lot of time wandering through ancient sites and thrilling over the New Mexico landscape. I am constantly amazed how you can drive 100 miles in almost any direction and see something totally different than where you came from!

Recently I spent a lot of time in the area north of Santa Fe and visited Abiquiu. As we drove along, I realized that I could see Georgia O'Keeffe's landscapes around me everywhere.

Georgia O'Keeffe was born November 15, 1887 and grew up in Sun Prairie, WI. She pursued art with a passion during her school years, studying at the Art Institute of Chicago and at the Art Students League in New York. The ideas of the time formed the basis for the art-making approach then in vogue: imitative realism. In 1908 Georgia won the William Merritt Chase prize for still life for her painting "Untitled (Dead Rabbit with Copper Pot)" It appears that O'Keeffe was not comfortable with this approach. Not long after receiving this award, she stopped making art.

In 1912 her interests were revived during a summer course at the University of Virginia where she was introduced to Arthur Wesley Dow's then revolutionary idea that art expressed the artist's own personal thoughts and feelings. The course was taught by Alon Bement from the Teachers' College at Columbia University. Arthur Wesley Dow was a colleague of Bement. Georgia experimented with these concepts during the next couple of years while working summers as Bement's assistant and teaching art in the public schools in Amarillo, TX. From late 1914 into the spring of 1915, Georgia O'Keeffe studied at Teachers' College . She was teaching art at Columbia College in Columbia, SC in 1915 when she started a series of abstract drawings in charcoal. Today, these drawings are recognized as the most innovative art work of the period.

O'Keeffe sent some of her drawings to a friend at Columbia University who shared them with the internationally known photographer Alfred Stieglitz. As a result, Stieglitz began corresponding with O'Keeffe. When she returned to take courses at Teacher's College in the spring of 1916, Stieglitz exhibited two of her charcoal abstracts at his famous New York gallery, 291. When he closed the doors of the gallery a year later, his final show was a one person exhibition of Georgia O'Keeffe's work.

While still living in Texas in 1917, Georgia visited Colorado and NM with her sister - the first of many trips. Stieglitz offered O'Keeffe a year of financial support and she moved from Texas to New York in 1918. O'Keeffe and Stieglitz were married in 1924 and lived and worked in New York for several years. Stieglitz worked tirelessly to publicize and promote O'Keeffe and her work with exhibitions at a variety of galleries and she became one of America's most successful and important artists. O'Keeffe began her large- scale close-up paintings of flowers in the mid-1920s. These paintings are among her best known work.

Georgia O'Keeffe called her Abiquiui home rancho de lost Burros. The home and adjacent structures were crumbling when Georgia O'Keeffe aquired the property in 1945. This was her home and studio for many years. Abiquiui is approximately an hour north of Santa Fe and it is definitely worth the drive!

Following her death the Georgia O'Keeffe Foundation was established to maintain the home and property. the home is open for tours by appointment only from early spring through late in the fall. Reservations are required - call 505-685-4539.

Here's a link to info on Georgia O'Keeffe's homes and visiting them:

click here

O'Keeffe Country is a good website to visit for a lot of general information. click here

There is an exhibit of abstracts by Georgia O'Keeffe at the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, NM. This show ran through September 12, 2010 and I was delighted to get to tour the opening of this wonderful exhibit. The exhibit includes a number of paintings that are on loan as well as many from the Museum's permanent collection. I had never seen some of the abstracts included in the show and the many large scale flower paintings will blow you away!

The Georgia O'Keeffe Museum is located downtown and the website is www.ofeeffemuseum.org.

Here's a link to a video on Georgia O'Keeffe presented by the San Diego Museum. Paste the link into your browser.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SD6t9606tGA&feature=share

In 1929, Georgia O'Keeffe spent the summer in New Mexico. She went to Taos at the invitation of some friends. While there, she heard about Ghost Ranch, but it would be a number of years before she actually visited Ghost Ranch. She was surprised to discover that it was a dude ranch. At first, she rented the owner's house. After staying at the ranch for several summers, she purchased the owner's house in 1940.

Stieglitz died in 1946 and three years later O'Keeffe moved to New Mexico. She lived in the house at Ghost Ranch that she had purchased several years earlier. However, the house was in the desert and was designed as a summer residence, so in 1945 O'Keeffe purchased a property in nearby Abiquiu and spent several years remodeling the old adobe home on the property. Georgia O'Keeffe continued painting into the 1970s. She continued living at the Abiquiu house until age and ill health necessitated a move to Santa Fe. Her health failed in 1984 and she died two years later. She was 98.

Driving through the area around Abiquiu provides constant reminders of Georgia O'Keeffe and her art. The Ghost Ranch lies a few miles to the north on US 84 and continues as a commercial enterprise today. There are currently several museums on the Ghost Ranch site, including the Ruth Hall Museum of Palentology and the Florence Hawley Ellis Museum of Anthropology. The museums are open Tuesday through Saturday from 9am to 5pm and on Sunday from 1-5pm.

In addition, there's an O'Keeffe landscape tour that takes you through the Ghost Ranch and many of the scenes captured in her paintings. You also can take a horseback tour of the Ghost Ranch, winding through a landscape that Georgia O'Keeffe explored daily. Reservations are required for this tour - contact 877-804-4678 ext. o for reservations and more info. There are charges for these tours. If you visit www.mongold.org, you'll find a tour of sites painted by Georgia O'Keeffe and also similar vistas. It's quite extensive. Visit the Ghost Ranch online at www.ghostranch.org.

You can make reservations for your own stay at the Ghost Ranch by calling 877-804-4678 or emailing info@ghostranch.org. In addition, there's a campground with RV and tent spaces. There's also lots of hiking available at the Ghost Ranch. Reservations can the made at the same number. There's also a Ghost Ranch in Santa Fe, located on Old Taos Highway (www.santafe@ghostranch.org for info).

The Ghost Ranch was originally known as Rancho de los Brujos or Ranch of the Witches and it was thought to be haunted. The Ghost Ranch was owned by Arthur Park and the entrance had long been marked with an animal skull. Georgia O'Keeffe was entranced with the animal skulls she found in the desert. She collected and painted many of them; she even shipped many of these bones back to New York. A navajo friend had a prized pet ox and when the animal died he gave Georgia the skull to Georgia. She created a painting of it which she gave to Arthur Pack. Mr. Pack had a logo for the ranch created based on her painting and this logo is in use today.