Best Georgia O’Keeffe Quotes

Georgia O’Keeffe Quotes About New Mexico, Life, Nature, Flowers, Color, Art, Feminism, The Desert & Inspirational! In recognition of her enormous contributions to modern art, Georgia O’Keeffe has been called the “Mother of American Modernism. Born on November 15, 1887, and raised on a farm outside Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. After graduating from high school in 1905, O’Keeffe set her sights on becoming an artist. She taught conventional painting methods at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Art Students League in New York.

O’Keeffe sent a few of her most abstract works to a friend in New York City by postal mail. In 1916, she was the first to have a show of her art. Flowers, New Mexico vistas, and the skyscrapers of New York City are her most popular subjects. Modernism and Precisionism were two of her main influences, although she dipped into the other style occasionally.

One of her paintings, ‘Jimson Weed/White Flower No,’ sold for $44.4 million, setting an auction record for the highest female artist price. Most of her works sell for millions of dollars. In the late 1920s, while she was living in New York City with her husband, she made some of her most remarkable paintings of the city’s skyscrapers. An artist needs inspiration and ability, technique, and dedication to produce an artwork.

O’Keeffe often traveled to New Mexico, searching for new creative approaches with which to explore. In order for an artist to be inspired, they need to go out of their daily routine and change their surroundings. On March 6, 1986, Georgia O’Keeffe died in Santa Fe, New Mexico, at 98. She is a well-known American artist and has been for many years.

Best Georgia O’Keeffe Quotes

1. “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.” — Georgia O’Keeffe

2. “Nobody sees a flower really; it is so small. We haven’t time, and to see takes time – like to have a friend takes time.” — Georgia O’Keeffe

3. “I decided that if I could paint that flower in a huge scale, you could not ignore its beauty.” — Georgia O’Keeffe

4. “I hate flowers – I paint them because they’re cheaper than models and they don’t move.” — Georgia O’Keeffe

5. “It was in the 1920s when nobody had time to reflect that I saw a still-life painting with a flower that was perfectly exquisite, but so small you really could not appreciate it.” — Georgia O’Keeffe

6. “If you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it’s your world for a moment.” — Georgia O’Keeffe

7. “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.” — Georgia O’Keeffe

8. “One can’t paint New York as it is, but rather as it is felt.” — Georgia O’Keeffe

9. “I often painted fragments of things because it seemed to make my statement as well as or better than the whole could.” — Georgia O’Keeffe

10. “I don’t very much enjoy looking at paintings in general. I know too much about them. I take them apart.” — Georgia O’Keeffe

11. “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.” — Georgia O’Keeffe

12. “To create one’s world in any of the arts takes courage.” — Georgia O’Keeffe

13. “I know now that most people are so closely concerned with themselves that they are not aware of their own individuality, I can see myself, and it has helped me to say what I want to say in paint.” — Georgia O’Keeffe

14. “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.” — Georgia O’Keeffe

15. “I got half-a-dozen paintings from that shattered plate.” — Georgia O’Keeffe

16. “You paint from your subject, not what you see… I rarely paint anything I don’t know very well.” — Georgia O’Keeffe

17. “The abstraction is often the most definite form for the intangible thing in myself that I can only clarify in paint.” — Georgia O’Keeffe

18. “It was all so far away – there was quiet and an untouched feel to the country and I could work as I pleased.” — Georgia O’Keeffe

19. “I wish people were all trees and I think I could enjoy them then.” — Georgia O’Keeffe

20. “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.” — Georgia O’Keeffe

21. “The morning is the best time, there are no people around. My pleasant disposition likes the world with nobody in it.” — Georgia O’Keeffe

22. “You are one of my nicest thoughts.” — Georgia O’Keeffe

23. “Anyone who doesn’t feel the crosses simply doesn’t get that country.” — Georgia O’Keeffe

24. “I’m getting to like you so tremendously that it sometimes scares me.” — Georgia O’Keeffe

25. “My pleasant disposition likes the world with nobody in it.” — Georgia O’Keeffe