• When Georgia was in the eighth grade she asked a daughter of a farm employee what she was going to do when she grew up. The girl said she didn't know. Georgia replied very definitely... "...I am going to be an artist!"--"I don't really know where I got my artist idea...I only know that by that time it was definitely settled in my mind."

• By 17, O’Keeffe was an accomplished artist.

• She studied art at the Art Institute of Chicago .

• She taught art in Texas, then headed off to Columbia Teachers College in New York.

• In 1912, one of Georgia’s sisters took her to meet Arthur Dow and she was inspired by his innovative style. She was influenced by Asian Art.

Arthur Dow

• Composition ... expresses the idea upon which the method here presented is founded - the "putting together" of lines, masses and colors to make a harmony. ... Composition, building up of harmony, is the fundamental process in all the fine arts. ... A natural method is of exercises in progressive order, first building up very simple harmonies ... Such a method of study includes all kinds of drawing, design and painting. It offers a means of training for the creative artist, the teacher or one who studies art for the sake of culture.

Drawing XIII , 1915

Abstraction 1917

• Early in 1916, Anita Pollitzer took some of Georgia's drawings to Alfred Stieglitz's 291 gallery. He was to exclaim, "At last, a woman on paper!".

• He told Anita the drawings were the "purest, finest, sincerest things that had entered 291 in a long while.", and that he would like to show them.

• Steiglitz pioneered the art of photography, and single-handedly introduced America to the works of Picasso, Matisse, and Cezanne at the gallery...along with publishing his well respected "Camera Works" magazine.

Lake George with Crows

Blue and Green Music

Dark Tree Trunks

City Night 1926

• During the long winter months in New York she began to paint her very large flowers, some of her most popular work today. She completed her first enormous flower painting in 1924.

Red Poppy

White Trumpet Flower 1929

Old Maple ,Lake George 1926

Iris 1929

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."

Goat’s Horn with Red

Rams Head and Hollyhock

Cow Skull Red, White and Blue 1930