Georgia O'Keeffe Quotes | Famous Quotations About Art, Flowers, Love, & Life
Georgia O'Keeffe was an American artist who is known for her progressive paintings and being the main figure of the art development of American Modernism, which started at the turn of the twentieth century.
Georgia O'Keeffe Famous Quotations include:
- Quotes About Art
- Quotes About Color
- Quotes About Flowers
- Quotes About Nature
- Quotes About Love
- Quotes About New Mexico
- Quotes About New York Quotes About Life
Georgia O'Keeffe Quotes About Art
“To create one's world in any of the arts takes courage.” ― Georgia O'Keeffe
“Nothing is less real than realism. Details are confusing. It is only by selection, by elimination, by emphasis, that we get at the real meaning of things.” ― Georgia O'Keeffe
“I often painted fragments of things because it seemed to make my statement as well as or better than the whole could.” ― Georgia O'Keeffe
“You paint from your subject, not what you see…I rarely paint anything I don’t know very well. It was 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 colors 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
“I am not an exponent of expressionism. I don't know exactly what that means, but I don't like the sound of it. I dislike cults and isms. I want to paint in terms of my own thinking and feeling.” ― Georgia O'Keeffe
“Singing has always seemed to me the most perfect means of expression. It is so spontaneous. And after singing, I think the violin. Since I cannot sing, I paint.” ― Georgia O'Keeffe
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Jimson Weed, White Flower No. 1 by Georgia O'Keeffe
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Georgia O'Keeffe Quotes About Color
“I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way... things I had no words for.” ― Georgia O'Keeffe
“My first memory is of light -- the brightness of light -- light all around.” ― Georgia O'Keeffe
“I know I cannot paint a flower. I cannot 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
“All the earth colours of the painter's palette are out there in the many miles of badlands....” ― Georgia O'Keeffe
“There's something about black. You feel hidden away in it.” ― Georgia O'Keeffe
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Oriental Poppies by Georgia O'Keeffe
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Georgia O'Keeffe Quotes About Flowers
“Nobody sees a flower - really - it is so small it takes time - we haven't time - and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.” ― Georgia O'Keeffe
“If you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it's your world for a moment.” ― 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
“Whether the flower or the color is the focus I do not know. I do know the flower is painted large to convey my experience with the flower - and what is my experience if it is not the color?” ― Georgia O'Keeffe
“-on flower series...I'll make them big like huge buildings going up. People will be startled; they will have to look at them.” ― Georgia O'Keeffe
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Ram’s Head White Hollyhock and Little Hills by Georgia O'Keeffe
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Georgia O'Keeffe Quotes About Nature
“I wish people were all trees and I think I could enjoy them then.” ― 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
“I feel there is something unexplored about woman that only a woman can explore.” ― Georgia O'Keeffe
“The skulls were there and I could say something with them. To me they are as beautiful as anything I know. To me they are strangely more living than the animals walking around -- hair, eyes and all, with the tails switching. 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
“There is something so perfect about the mountains and the lake and the trees.... sometimes I want to tear it all to pieces.” ― Georgia O'Keeffe
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Blue and Green Music by Georgia O'Keeffe
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Georgia O'Keeffe Quotes About Love
“One day a hummingbird flew in-- It fluttered against the window til I got it down where I could reach it with an open umbrella-- --When I had it in my hand it was so small I couldn't believe I had it--but I could feel the intense life--so intense and so tiny-- ...You were like the hummingbird to me... And I am rather inclined to feel that you and I know the best part of one another without spending much time together-- --It is not that I fear the knowing-- It is that I am at this moment willing to let you be what you are to me--it is beautiful and pure and very intensely alive.” ― Georgia O'Keeffe
“I'm getting to like you so tremendously that it sometimes scares me.” ― Georgia O'Keeffe
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My Faraway One: Selected Letters of Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz
“to Russell Vernon Hunter
New York
Spring 1932
My dear Vernon Hunter
Your letter gives me such a vivid picture of something I love in space — love almost as passionately as I can love a person — that I am almost tempted to pack my little bag and go — but I will not go to it right this morning — No matter how much I love it — There is something in me that must finish jobs once started — when I can —.
So I am here — and what you write of me is there
The cockscomb is here too — I put it in much cold water and it came to life from a kind of flatness it had in the box when I opened it — tho it was very beautiful as it lay in the box a bit wilted when I opened it —. I love it — Thank you.
I must confess to you — that I even have the desire to go into old Mexico — that I would have gone — undoubtedly — if it were only myself that I considered — You are wise — so wise — in staying in your own country that you know and love — I am divided between my man and a life with him — and something of the outdoors — of your world — that is in my blood — and that I know I will never get rid of — I have to get along with my divided self the best way I can —.
So give my greetings to the sun and the sky — and the wind — and the dry never-ending land
—Sincerely
Georgia O'Keeffe”Â
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Sky Above Clouds Iv by Georgia O'Keeffe
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Georgia O'Keeffe Quotes About New Mexico
“...the Piedra Lumbre is the best thing I've ever known in New Mexico---the closest thing to God, I guess.” ― Georgia O'Keeffe
"- arriving in New Mexico...Well! Well! Well!... This is wonderful. No one told me it was like this!" ― Georgia O'Keeffe
"-on New Mexico...Anyone who doesn't feel the crosses simply doesn't get that country." ― Georgia O'Keeffe
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Georgia O'Keeffe Quotes About New York
“I'll paint it big and they will be surprised into taking the time to look at it – I will make even busy New Yorkers take time to see what I see of flowers." ― Georgia O'Keeffe
“One can't paint New York as it is, but rather as it is felt." ― Georgia O'Keeffe
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Radiator Building — Night, New York by Georgia O'Keeffe
Georgia O'Keeffe Quotes About Life
“It's not enough to be nice in life. You've got to have nerve.” ― 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 that I wanted to do.” ― 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
“Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing--and keeping the unknown always beyond you.” ― Georgia O'Keeffe
“I think it's so foolish for people to want to be happy. Happy is so momentary--you're happy for an instant and then you start thinking again. Interest is the most important thing in life; happiness is temporary, but interest is continuous.” ― Georgia O'Keeffe
“Where I was born and where and how I have lived is unimportant. It is what I have done with where I have been that should be of interest.” ― Georgia O'Keeffe
“To create one's own world takes courage.” ― Georgia O'Keeffe
“I decided to accept as true my own thinking.” ― Georgia O'Keeffe
“You are one of my nicest thoughts.” ― Georgia O'Keeffe
“I'm frightened all the time. But I never let it stop me. Never!” ― Georgia O'Keeffe
“Someone else's vision will never be as good as your own vision of your self. Live and die with it 'cause in the end it’s all you have. Lose it and you lose yourself and everything else.” ― Georgia O'Keeffe
“The morning is the best time, there are no people around. My pleasant disposition likes the world with nobody in it.” ― Georgia O'Keeffe
“One cannot be an American by going about saying that one is an American. It is necessary to feel America, like America, love America and then work.” ― Georgia O'Keeffe
“Anyone with any degree of mental toughness ought to be able to exist without the things they like most for a few months at least.” ― Georgia O'Keeffe
“When I look over the photographs Stieglitz took of me-some of them more than sixty years ago-I wonder who that person is. It is as if in my one life I have lived many lives. If the person in the photographs were living in this world today, she would be quite a different person-but it doesn't matter-Stieglitz photographed her then.” ― Georgia O'Keeffe
“You get whatever accomplishment you are willing to declare.” ― Georgia O'Keeffe
“I seem to be hunting for something of myself out there — something in myself that will give me a symbol for all this — a symbol for the sense of life I get out here —” ― Georgia O'Keeffe
“[Taos is] a high, wise, sage-covered plain. In the evening, with the sun at your back, it looks like an ocean, like water. The color up there is different . . . the blue-green of the sage and mountains, the wildflowers in bloom. It's a different kind of color from any I'd ever seen---there's nothing like that in north Texas or even in Colorado. And it's not just the color that attracted me either The world is so wide up there, so big.” ― Georgia O'Keeffe
“I know now that most people are so closely concerned with themselves that they are not aware of their own individuality, I can see myself, and it has helped me to say what I want to say in paint.” ― Georgia O'Keeffe
“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.” ― Georgia O'Keeffe
Georgia O'Keeffe Famous Paintings
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Summer Days by Georgia O'Keeffe
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