Georgia O'Keeffe

Georgia O'Keeffe

Painter (1887-1986)

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"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 is an artist best known for her paintings of enlarged flowers, New York skyscrapers, and New Mexico landscapes. Throughout the years, she developed an enjoyment for land and nature, which led to her eventual settlement in New Mexico. 

O'Keeffe was one of the first female painters to achieve worldwide acclaim from critics and the general public. She managed to stay independent from shifting art trends, staying true to her own vision-- finding abstract forms in nature. 

                 

The last two decades of O'Keeffe's life were spent dealing with poor health and blindness which made it difficult for her to work. When she died at age 96, her ashes were scattered over the thing she had come to love so much, the New Mexico landscape.

In the Classroom

Georgia O'Keeffe's work could be introduced to students alongside a science lesson about rocks and minerals. Students could look to her paintings and think about the different rocks and minerals they may find in the landscapes that she painted. Students could then paint their own landscapes of places that they have been to.