GEORGIA O'KEEFFE
AND HER
LARGER THAN LIFE PAINTINGS.
Georgia was a great American Modernist Abstract Artist. She used nature's simplest and smallest things to create large versions of what she saw in great detail. Cow skulls, bones, flowers, just to name a few.
She once said, "I decided if I could paint that flower in a huge scale, you could not ignore it's beauty"
She studied art in Chicago where she met Alfred Stieglitz, who she fell madly, passionately in love with, and later married. They have written that he became her mentor. His guidance and formal training helped her to succeed as a professional artist. I strongly disagree!!
Alfred had the connections that she needed to get her where she needed to be in the art world but Georgia was strong and confident enough in her talent and capabilities that her work would have been noticed regardless of his influence. Her life with Alfred was an ill-fated life as he was not faithful to her and the biggest reason why she left Chicago and moved to Taos, New Mexico where she set up a studio and continued to paint, but on her own terms.
And yes, she dressed in nothing but black after she moved to New Mexico, partly, I assume, because she mourned the death of her life with Stieglitz. Her heart was broke but yet, she continued to paint, and paint gloriously!
Some would think that moving to a deserted place to paint would be a career killer for any artist but not for Georgia. Her fame grew more once she was away from society and discovered her true self as an artist by the inspiration of her natural surroundings. Her style of painting grew and evolved by seeing the immense world of nature around her and capturing what she saw on canvas, painting to please her inner self.
"I realized I had things in my head not 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."
And saying or painting what was her own is exactly what she did. She paid no attention to the critics and painted where her paintbrush led her without any doubts. A very gutsy, brave thing to do in a time where so much depended on what the art critic's view was toward an artist! She did not care but had only pure intentions to bring out the beauty of things that had no beauty.
"The bones seemed 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 in all of its beauty."
But her best quote is, "Art is a wicked thing. It is what we are."
I like that.
So the theme is to express yourself through your art as Georgia did. And as she would have put it, "To make your unknown known. That is the important thing".
You can represent her as you see her as an artist or create your own modern, abstract art of what you see and identify with that inspires your own individual style of creating art.
Also, look at the Georgia Page I created with photos and some of her most famous paintings that you are welcome to use in your artwork.
I do apologize as I have been very lax in keeping The Artist Showcase up to date with the Themes! I updated that this weekend!! Finally! See if your creations are in The Artist Showcase! I bet you will find your artwork there!
***From last week's Theme on Frida for an extra treat and inspiration: Go check out Carole Jones and her Craftilious Blog, also a fellow DT at Gecko Galz, to see her Mini Frida Book!! It is stunning! Here is the link: https://cjcrafty.blogspot.com/2025/01/formidable-frida.html
Here are my creations:
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