Georgia O'Keeffe Quotes

1887–1986 United States

Georgia Totto O'Keeffe (15 November 1887 – 6 March 1986) was an American modernist painter. She was known for her paintings of enlarged flowers, New York skyscrapers, and New Mexico landscapes.

United States
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Painters

Also known as: O'Keeffe, Georgia

Random Georgia O'Keeffe quote

9 quotes

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

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

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.

The Second Outline in Portraiture (1936)

I don't really know where I got my artists idea. The scraps of what I remember do not explain to me where it came from. I only know that by this time [her eight grade's year] it was definitely settled in my mind.

Some Memories of Drawings (1976)

I do not like the idea of happiness — it is too momentary — I would say that I was always busy and interested in something — interest has more meaning to me than the idea of happiness.

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.

letter to William Milliken (1930)

Anita – I am so glad I'm out here – I can't tell you how much I like it. I like the plains – and I like the work [her painting] – everything is so ridiculously new – and there is something about it that just makes you glad you're living here – You understand – there is nothing here – so maybe there is something wrong with me that I am liking it so much.

Letters to Anita Pollitzer (1916)

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.

Some Memories of Drawings (1976)

The abstraction is often the most definite form for the intangible thing in myself that I can only clarify in paint. … I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way — things I had no words for.

Some Memories of Drawings (1976)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Georgia O'Keeffe (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.