Georgia O'Keeffe Quotes

106 Sourced Quotes

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

Georgia O'Keeffe
I've been absolutely terrified every moment of my life - and I've never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do.

Georgia O'Keeffe
Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing.

Georgia O'Keeffe
God told me if I painted that mountain enough, I could have it.

Georgia O'Keeffe
When I began to paint flowers, I was sure nobody would pay attention. So I thought, I'll make them big and they'll pay attention — one of those good-for-nothing reasons. But they took notice.

Georgia O'Keeffe
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
.. About my work Howard – I always have two opinions – one is my way of seeing it for myself – and for myself I am never satisfied – never really – I almost always fail – always I think – now next time I can do it – Maybe that is part of what keeps one working – I can also look at myself – by that I mean my work from the point of view of the looking public – and that is the way I look at it when I think of showing. I have always first had a show for myself – and made up my mind – then after that it doesn't matter to me very much what anyone else say – good or bad.

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

Georgia O'Keeffe
Alfred [Stieglitz] was always apprehensive about my new things. When I started painting big flowers he said, 'Well, what do you think you are going to do with that?' He was always nervous until the first notices came in. When I brought back my bones from New Mexico and began to work on them he had a fit.

Georgia O'Keeffe
Wherever I go, I have an eye out of rocks. Outside my hotel on Phnom Penh I picked up a stone and carried it back around the world in my purse.

Georgia O'Keeffe
When I came to New Mexico in the summer of 1929, I was so crazy about the country that I thought, how can I take part of it with me to work on? There was nothing to see in the land in the way of a flower. There were just dry white bones. So I picked them up.... I took back a barrel of bones to New York.

Georgia O'Keeffe
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 effort to create an equivalent with paint color for the world – life as I see it.

Georgia O'Keeffe
I decided to start anew, to strip away what I had been taught.

Georgia O'Keeffe
I locked myself up in my room and held a private exhibition of everything I had painted. I notice which paintings had been influenced by this painter, which by that one. The I determined which of the finished pieces represented me alone. From that moment forward I knew exactly what kind of work I wanted to do.

Georgia O'Keeffe
I hate flowers. I only paint them because they're cheaper than models and they don't move.

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

Georgia O'Keeffe
Nobody sees a flower — really— it is so small — we haven't time —and to see takes time.

Georgia O'Keeffe
When I think of death, I only regret that I will not be able to see this beautiful country anymore unless the Indians are right and my spirit will walk here after I'm gone.

Georgia O'Keeffe
Equal Rights and Responsibilities is a basic idea that would have very important psychological effects on women and men from the time they are born. It could very much change the girl child's idea of her place in the world... It seems to me very important to the idea of true democracy – to my country – and to the world eventually – that all men and women stand equal under the sky – I wish that you could be with us in this fight..

Georgia O'Keeffe
Singing has always seemed to me the most perfect means of expression. Since I cannot sing, I paint.

Georgia O'Keeffe
I wish people were all trees and I think I could enjoy them then.

Georgia O'Keeffe
Filling a space in a beautiful way. That's what art means to me.

Georgia O'Keeffe
I have already settled it for myself so flattery and criticism go down the same drain and I am quite free.

Georgia O'Keeffe
Artists and religionists are never far apart, they go to the sources of revelation for what they choose to experience and what they report is the degree of their experiences. Intellect wishes to arrange — intuition wishes to accept.

Georgia O'Keeffe
My first memory is of the brightness of light — light all around.

Georgia O'Keeffe
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.

Georgia O'Keeffe
The plains are very wonderful now – like green gold and yellow gold and red gold – in patches – and the distance blue and pink and lavender strips and spots – May sounds like a Dow Canyon but really its wonderful – specially in the evening – I usually go alone – Yesterday rode home on a hay wagon – no it was clover with a funny old man – His mules and wagon blocked my path so we started talking... We had a great time riding toward the sunset. He was little and dried up and weather beaten – but he likes living..

Georgia O'Keeffe
Even if I could put down accurately the thing that I saw and enjoyed, it would not give the observer the kind of feeling it gave me. I had to create an equivalent for what I felt about what I was looking at — not copy it.

Georgia O'Keeffe
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.

Georgia O'Keeffe
I realized 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.

Georgia O'Keeffe