Georgia O'Keeffe Quotes & Sayings

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

I believe I would rather have Stieglitz like something - anything I had done - than anyone else I know. — 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

It's not enough to be nice in life. You've got to have nerve. — Georgia O'Keeffe

To make your unknown known - that's the important thing. — Georgia O'Keeffe

Making your unknown known is the important thing - and keeping the unknown always beyond you - catching - crystalizing your simpler clearer vision of life - only to see it turn stale compared to what you vaguely feel ahead - that you must always keep working to grasp ... — Georgia O'Keeffe

I have things in my head that are not like what anyone taught me - shapes and ideas so near to me,so natural to my way of being and thinking. — Georgia O'Keeffe

It seems to me very important to the idea of democracy to the country and to the world eventually that all men and women stand equal under the sky. — Georgia O'Keeffe

I don't very much enjoy looking at paintings in general. I know too much about them. I take them apart. — 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

War is killing the individual in it unless he has learned livingness - if he had it he wouldn't be a good soldier. — Georgia O'Keeffe

I took back a barrel of bones to New York. They were my symbols of the desert, but nothing more. I haven't seen enough to think of any other symbolism. The skulls were there and I could say something with them. — Georgia O'Keeffe

To create one's world in any of the arts takes courage. — 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

The painting is like a thread that runs through all the reasons for all the other things that make one's life. — Georgia O'Keeffe

Marks on paper are free - free speech - press - pictures all go together I suppose. — 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

You get whatever accomplishment you are willing to declare. — Georgia O'Keeffe

I find that I have painted my life - things happening in my life - without knowing. — 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. I should have listened to myself. — Georgia O'Keeffe

I have not worked at all ... Nothing seems worth putting down - I seem to have nothing to say - it appalls me but that is the way it is. — Georgia O'Keeffe

I've been terrified my whole life but it never kept me from doing a single thing. — Georgia O'Keeffe

It always seems to me that so few people live - they just seem to exist and I don't see any reason why we shouldn't live always - til we die physically ... — Georgia O'Keeffe

Happiness goes like the wind, but what is interesting stays. — Georgia O'Keeffe

A week ago it was the mountains I thought the most wonderful, and today it's the plains. I guess it's the feeling of bigness in both that carries me away. — Georgia O'Keeffe

When you get so that you can't see, you come to it gradually. And if you didn't come by it gradually, I guess you'd just kill yourself when you couldn't see. — Georgia O'Keeffe

I've been afraid every single day of my life, but I've gone ahead and done it anyway. — Georgia O'Keeffe

One works because I suppose it is the most interesting thing one knows to do. The days one works are the best days. On the other days one is hurrying through the other things one imagines one has to do to keep one's life going ... — Georgia O'Keeffe

All the earth colours of the painter's palette are out there in the many miles of badlands ... — Georgia O'Keeffe

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

I had to create an equivalent for what I felt about what I was looking at - not copy it. — Georgia O'Keeffe

The men liked to put me down as the best woman painter. I think I'm one of the best painters. — Georgia O'Keeffe

His letters ... have been like fine cold water when you are terribly thirsty ... — 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

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

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

My painting is what I have to give back to the world for what the world gives to me. — Georgia O'Keeffe

I don't know what Art is but I know some things it isn't when I see them. — Georgia O'Keeffe

You are one of my nicest thoughts. — 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

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

It was all so far away - there was quiet and an untouched feel to the country and I could work as I pleased. — Georgia O'Keeffe

It seems to be my mission in life to wait on a dog. — Georgia O'Keeffe

There's something about black. You feel hidden away in it. — Georgia O'Keeffe

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

Art is a wicked thing. It is what we are. — 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

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 tree. It is lines and colors put together so that they may say something. — Georgia O'Keeffe

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

In the evening I go up in the desert and spend hours watching the sun go down, just enjoying it, and every day I go out and watch it again. I draw some and there is a little painting and so the days go by. — Georgia O'Keeffe

Since I cannot sing, I paint. — Georgia O'Keeffe

My pleasant disposition likes the world with nobody in it. (Life, March 1, 1968) — Georgia O'Keeffe

I do not like the idea of happyness - 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 happyness. — 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 often painted fragments of things because it seemed to make my statement as well as or better than the whole could. — Georgia O'Keeffe

He wanted head and hands and arms on a pillow - in many different positions. I was asked to move my hands in many different ways - also my head - and I had to turn this way and that. There were nudes that might have been of several different people - sitting - standing - even standing upon the radiator against the window - that was difficult - radiators don't intend you to stand on top of them. (On being photographed by Alfred Stieglitz) — Georgia O'Keeffe

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

Sun-bleached bones were most wonderful against the blue - that blue that will always be there as it is now after all man's destruction is finished. — 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

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

When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it's your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else. Most people in the city rush around so, they have no time to look at a flower. I want them to see it whether they want to or not. — 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

Fill a space in a beautiful way. — 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 hate flowers - I paint them because they're cheaper than models and they don't move. — Georgia O'Keeffe

When people read erotic symbols into my painting, they're really thinking about their own affairs. — Georgia O'Keeffe

Before I put brush to canvas, I question, 'Is this mine? ... Is it influenced by some idea which I have acquired from some man? ... I am trying with all my skill to do a painting that is all of women, as well as all of me. — Georgia O'Keeffe

I have painted portraits that to me are almost photographic. I remember hesitating to show the paintings, they looked so real to me. But they have passed into the world as abstractions - no one seeing what they are. — Georgia O'Keeffe

The simple fact of yourself ... there it is ... just you ... no excitement about it ... a very simple fact ... the only thing you have ... keep it as clear as you can. — 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'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

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

The clean clear colours 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, '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

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 it was definitely settled in my mind. — Georgia O'Keeffe

On the way I stood a moment looking out across the marshes with tall cattails, a patch of water, more marsh, then the woods with a few birch trees shining white at the edge on beyond. In
the darkness it all looked just like I felt. Wet and swampy and gloomy, very gloomy. In the morning I painted it. My memory of it is that it was probably my best painting that summer — Georgia O'Keeffe

Slits in nothingness are not very easy to paint. — Georgia O'Keeffe

I have a single track mind. I work on an idea for a long time. It's like getting acquainted with a person, and I don't get acquainted easily. — Georgia O'Keeffe

Now and then when I get an idea for a picture, I think, how ordinary. Why paint that old rock? Why not go for a walk instead? But then I realise that to someone else it may not seem so ordinary. — Georgia O'Keeffe

I said to myself, I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me - shapes and ideas so near to me - so natural to my way of being and thinking that it hasn't occurred to me to put them down. I decided to start anew, to strip away what I had been taught. — Georgia O'Keeffe

I never knew [Alfred Stieglitz] to make a trip anywhere to photograph. His eye was in him, and he used it on anything that was nearby. Maybe that way he was always photographing himself. — Georgia O'Keeffe

I know I can not paint a flower, I can not paint the sun on the desert on a bright summer morning but maybe in terms of paint colour 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

I wish so much to go that I almost wish I had never been there. — Georgia O'Keeffe

I have lived on a razors edge. So what if you fall off. I'd rather be doing something I wanted to do. I'd walk it again. — Georgia O'Keeffe

It was in the 1920s, when nobody had time to reflect, that I saw a still-life painting with a flower that was perfectly exquisite, but so small you really could not appreciate it. — Georgia O'Keeffe

My first memory is of the brightness of light ... light all around. I was sitting among pillows on a quilt on the ground ... very large white pillows ... — Georgia O'Keeffe

Filling a space in a beautiful way - that is what art means to me. — Georgia O'Keeffe

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

We'd make love. Afterwards he would take photographs of me. (On modeling for Alfred Stieglitz) — Georgia O'Keeffe

I know I am unreasonable about people but there are so many wonderful people whom I can't take the time to know. — Georgia O'Keeffe

I am divided between my man and a life with him---and some thing 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--- — Georgia O'Keeffe

Did you ever have something to say and feel as if the whole side of the wall wouldn't be big enough to say it on, and then sit down on the floor and try to get it onto a sheet of charcoal paper? — 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

I see no reason for painting anything that can be put into any other form as well. — 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

I decided to accept as true my own thinking. — Georgia O'Keeffe

I'm glad I want everything in the world - good and bad - bitter and sweet - I want it all. — Georgia O'Keeffe

When I found the beautiful white bones in the desert I picked them up and took them home too ... I have used these things to say what is to me the wideness and wonder of the world as I live in it. — Georgia O'Keeffe

The abstraction is often the most definite form for the intangible thing in myself that I can clarify in paint. — Georgia O'Keeffe

I decided to start anew-to strip away what I had been taught, to accept as true my own thinking. This was one of the best times of my life. There was no one around to look at what I was doing, no one interested, no one to say anything about it one way or another. I was alone and singularly free, working into my own, unknown-no one to satisfy but myself. I began with charcoal and paper and decided not to use any color until it was impossible to do what I wanted to do in black and white. I believe it was June before I needed blue. — 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