Georgia O'Keeffe

Georgia o"Keeffe

One of my favorite heroes is Georgia for many reasons. Not only was she a great artist with a very unique eye for the unusual, but she was also one of the most adventurous spirits of her time period.

My favorite quote comes from one of her classmates when when she was studying at the Chicago Art Institute. Upon graduation, he told her she would be nothing more than a public school art teacher since she was a woman. She did, in fact, become an art teacher in Texas but thanks to Alfred Stieglitz, co-artist pal and lover, she did not remain an art teacher. She went on to become "The most famous American Female Artist of her Time." 

Her career started at the beginning of the modern art movement in the United States. This movement started much later in the USA than it did in Europe and Americans were not very accepting of the new styles that described modern art. They did love Georgia's work and I think she created a great bridge between the ignorance of the uneducated American towards art and all the modern artist that were experimenting with the new creative styles and attitudes.

Later when she moved to New Mexico, there were many great artists at the Taos Art Colony but Georgia had a unique eye and a way of abstracting the image by cropping a small detail, then enlarging its scale to gigantic proportions so it is unrecognizable as the original object. Her study of subtle color variations was fantastic. We learn about entire worlds buried in the organic plants she would paint. Even the traditional landscapes and cityscapes that other artists were doing at the time take on a whole new look when Georgia painted them. Her eye was truly unique and her insight was one of a kind. One of my favorite quotes of hers has to do with this insightful eye she had:

"There are too many ugly things in the world, why create ugly art?"

Although I can relate to the ugly art movement, I am drawn to the beautiful images of Georgia's much more. I don't think this woman was capable of creating anything ugly.

I remember the day she died. It was announced in the news. I was a young artist working as a graphic designer at an in-house retail art department. I kept telling everyone around me that Georgia was gone but they didn't seem to care or understand the impact. I didn't get a lot of respect at this time (nor did any other women artists) so I looked to the few women artists in history who paved the way for the rest of us. Georgia will always be one of my great heroes because of her style, her class and the fact that she always remained true to herself even when others were saying she couldn't be anybody great.