Georgia O'Keeffe Quotes

I am not an exponent of expressionism. I don't know exactly what that means, but I don't like the sound of it. I dislike cults and isms. I want to paint in terms of my own thinking and feeling.

If only people were trees ... I might like them better.

Dearest - my body is simply crazy with wanting you - If you don't come tomorrow - I don't see how I can wait for you - I wonder if your body wants mine the way mine wants yours - the kisses - the hotness - the wetness - all melting together - the being held so tight that it hurts - the strangle and the struggle.

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

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.

On the way I stood a moment looking out across the marshes with tall cattails, a patch of water, more marsh, then the woods with a few birch trees shining white at the edge on beyond. In
the darkness it all looked just like I felt. Wet and swampy and gloomy, very gloomy. In the morning I painted it. My memory of it is that it was probably my best painting that summer

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

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 don't really know where I got my artists idea. The scraps of what I remember do not explain to me where it came from. I only know that by this time it was definitely settled in my mind.

I seem to be hunting for something of myself out there - something in myself that will give me a symbol for all this - a symbol for the sense of life I get out here -

I realized that were I to paint flowers small, no one would look at them because I was unknown. So I thought I'll make them big, like the huge buildings going up. People will be startled; they'll have to look at them - and they did.

A flower is relatively small ... Still in a way-nobody sees a flower-so I said to myself-I'll paint it big.

Since I cannot sing, I paint.

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.

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

War is killing the individual in it unless he has learned livingness - if he had it he wouldn't be a good soldier.

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.

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

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.

Art is a wicked thing. It is what we are.

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.

I don't know what Art is but I know some things it isn't when I see them.

My first memory is of the brightness of light ... light all around. I was sitting among pillows on a quilt on the ground ... very large white pillows ...

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 tree. It is lines and colors put together so that they may say something.

You write about my flower as if I think and see what you think and see of the flower - and I don't.

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.

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

When I found the beautiful white bones in the desert I picked them up and took them home too ... I have used these things to say what is to me the wideness and wonder of the world as I live in it.

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

The bones seem to cut sharply to the center of something that is keenly alive on the desert even tho' it is vast and empty and untouchable ... and knows no kindness with all its beauty.

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

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.

I never knew [Alfred Stieglitz] to make a trip anywhere to photograph. His eye was in him, and he used it on anything that was nearby. Maybe that way he was always photographing himself.

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

I decided to start anew-to strip away what I had been taught, to accept as true my own thinking. This was one of the best times of 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 into my own, unknown-no one to satisfy but myself. I began with charcoal and paper and decided not to use any color until it was impossible to do what I wanted to do in black and white. I believe it was June before I needed blue.

I'd been taught to paint like other people, and I thought, what's the use? I couldn't do any better than they, or even as well. I was just adding to the brushpile. So I quit.

Color is one of the great things in the world that makes life worth living to me and as I have come to think of painting it is my efforts to create an equivalent with paint color for the world, life as I see it.

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.

I decided to accept as true my own thinking.

In the evening I go up in the desert and spend hours watching the sun go down, just enjoying it, and every day I go out and watch it again. I draw some and there is a little painting and so the days go by.

You get whatever accomplishment you are willing to declare.

I see no reason for painting anything that can be put into any other form as well.

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.

Slits in nothingness are not very easy to paint.

To create one's own world takes courage.

I had to create an equivalent for what I felt about what I was looking at - not copy it.

I decided that if I could paint that flower in a huge scale, you could not ignore its beauty.

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

We'd make love. Afterwards he would take photographs of me. (On modeling for Alfred Stieglitz)

I've been terrified my whole life but it never kept me from doing a single thing.

I look at my work and make up my mind about it. After that, neither flattery nor criticism matters to me.

If one could only reproduce nature, and always with less beauty than the original, why paint at all?

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

A week ago it was the mountains I thought the most wonderful, and today it's the plains. I guess it's the feeling of bigness in both that carries me away.

Fill a space in a beautiful way.

Did you ever have something to say and feel as if the whole side of the wall wouldn't be big enough to say it on, and then sit down on the floor and try to get it onto a sheet of charcoal paper?

My painting is what I have to give back to the world for what the world gives to me.

I know I am unreasonable about people but there are so many wonderful people whom I can't take the time to know.

I like an empty wall because I can imagine what I like on it.

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.

So I said to myself-I'll paint what I see-what the flower is to me but I'll paint it big and they will be surprised into taking the time to look at it-I will make even busy New Yorkers take time to see what I see of flowers.

There's something about black. You feel hidden away in it.

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

I want real things ... music that makes holes in the sky.

It was all so far away - there was quiet and an untouched feel to the country and I could work as I pleased.

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

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

I have a single track mind. I work on an idea for a long time. It's like getting acquainted with a person, and I don't get acquainted easily.

It always seems to me that so few people live - they just seem to exist and I don't see any reason why we shouldn't live always - til we die physically ...

I took back a barrel of bones to New York. They were my symbols of the desert, but nothing more. I haven't seen enough to think of any other symbolism. The skulls were there and I could say something with them.

Before I put brush to canvas, I question, 'Is this mine? ... Is it influenced by some idea which I have acquired from some man? ... I am trying with all my skill to do a painting that is all of women, as well as all of me.

I have painted portraits that to me are almost photographic. I remember hesitating to show the paintings, they looked so real to me. But they have passed into the world as abstractions - no one seeing what they are.

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. Most people in the city rush around so, they have no time to look at a flower. I want them to see it whether they want to or not.

The clean clear colours were in my head. But one day as I looked at the brown burned wood of the Shanty, I thought 'I can paint one of those dismal-coloured paintings like the men. I think
just for fun I will try - all low-toned and dreary with the tree besides the door.' In my next show, 'The Shanty' went up. The men seemed to approve of it. They seemed to think that maybe I
was beginning to paint ... that was my only low-toned dismal-coloured painting.

One works because I suppose it is the most interesting thing one knows to do. The days one works are the best days. On the other days one is hurrying through the other things one imagines one has to do to keep one's life going ...

The simple fact of yourself ... there it is ... just you ... no excitement about it ... a very simple fact ... the only thing you have ... keep it as clear as you can.

I know I can not paint a flower, I can not paint the sun on the desert on a bright summer morning but maybe in terms of paint colour I can convey to you my experience of the flower or the experience that makes the flower of significance to me at that particular time.

The men liked to put me down as the best woman painter. I think I'm one of the best painters.

The abstraction is often the most definite form for the intangible thing in myself that I can clarify in paint.

He wanted head and hands and arms on a pillow - in many different positions. I was asked to move my hands in many different ways - also my head - and I had to turn this way and that. There were nudes that might have been of several different people - sitting - standing - even standing upon the radiator against the window - that was difficult - radiators don't intend you to stand on top of them. (On being photographed by Alfred Stieglitz)

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

The meaning of a word - to me - is not as exact as the meaning of a color. Colors and shapes make a more definite statement than words.

It seems to me very important to the idea of democracy to the country and to the world eventually that all men and women stand equal under the sky.

Imagination makes you see all sorts of things.

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.

Singing has always seemed to me the most perfect means of expression. It is so spontaneous. And after singing, I think the violin. Since I cannot sing, I paint.

Sun-bleached bones were most wonderful against the blue - that blue that will always be there as it is now after all man's destruction is finished.

I am trying with all my skill to do a painting that is all woman, as well as all of me.

Making your unknown known is the important thing - and keeping the unknown always beyond you - catching - crystalizing your simpler clearer vision of life - only to see it turn stale compared to what you vaguely feel ahead - that you must always keep working to grasp ...

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.

Whether the flower or the color is the focus I do not know. I do know the flower is painted large to convey my experience with the flower - and what is my experience if it is not the color?

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

I always have a curious sort of feeling about some of my things - I hate to show them - I am perfectly inconsistent about it - I am afraid people won't understand - and I hope they won't - and am afraid they will.