Georgia O'Keeffe - Paint Quotes

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It is surprising to me to see how many people separate the objective from the abstract. Objective painting is not good painting unless it is good in the abstract sense. A hill or tree cannot make a good painting just because it is a hill or a tree. It is lines and colours put together so that they say something. For me that is the very basis of painting. The abstraction is often the most definite form for the intangible thing in myself that I can only clarify in paint.

Georgia O'Keeffe
A flower is relatively small... Still in a way-nobody sees a flower-so I said to myself-I'll paint it big.

Georgia O'Keeffe
If one could only reproduce nature, and always with less beauty than the original, why paint at all?

Georgia O'Keeffe
I... found myself saying to myself — I can't live where I want to — I can't go where I want to — 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 and say what I wanted to when I painted as that seemed to be the only thing I could do that didn't concern anybody but myself.

Georgia O'Keeffe
I said to myself — I'll paint what I see — what the flower is to me but I'll paint it big and they will be surprised into taking time to look at it — I will make even busy New Yorkers take time to see what I see of flowers.

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

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
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 realized that were I to paint flowers small, no one would look at them because I was unknown. So I thought I'll make them big, like the huge buildings going up. People will be startled; they'll have to look at them — and they did.

Georgia O'Keeffe
The clean clear colours [of a Shanty farm] were in my head. But one day as I looked at the brown burned wood of the Shanty, I thought 'I can paint one of those dismal-coloured paintings like the men. I think just for fun I will try — all low-toned and dreary with the tree besides the door.' In my next show [c. 1923], 'The Shanty' went up. The men seemed to approve of it. They seemed to think that maybe I was beginning to paint.... that was my only low-toned dismal-coloured painting.

Georgia O'Keeffe
Stones, bones, clouds — experience gives me shapes — but sometimes the shapes I paint end up having no resemblance to the actual experience.

Georgia O'Keeffe
I know I cannot paint a flower. I can not paint the sun on the desert on a bright summer morning but maybe in terms of paint color I can convey to you my experience of the flower or the experience that makes the flower of significance to me at that particular time.

Georgia O'Keeffe
Anita, I have just come the comforting conclusion that I'll have to paint acres and acres of water color landscapes before I will look for even a passably fair one. After about ten attempts — I certainly have to laugh at myself — It's like feeling around in the dark — thought I knew what I was going to try to do but I find I don't — and guess I'll only find out by slaving away at it. I feel — like a wreck — Have been working like mad all day — and you know how deliciously disgusted with every thing one can be — when the sun begins to go down — and one has been working ones head off all day. It gives me the sensation I used to have when I was a youngster and was going away from home on the train — It is a very special sort of sick feeling.

Georgia O'Keeffe
The meaning of a word — to me — is not as exact as the meaning of a color. Colors and shapes make a more definite statement than words. I write this [1974] because such odd things have been done about me with words. I have often been told what to paint … I make this effort because no one else can know how my paintings happen.

Georgia O'Keeffe
I'd been taught to paint like other people, and I thought, what's the use? I couldn't do any better than they, or even as well. I was just adding to the brushpile. So I quit.

Georgia O'Keeffe
School and things that painters have taught me even keep me from painting as I want to. I decided I was a very stupid fool not to be at least paint as I wanted to and say what I wanted to when I painted as that seemed to be the only thing I could do that didn't concern anybody but myself... I found that I could say things with colour and shapes that I couldn't say in any other way things that I had no words for.

Georgia O'Keeffe