Georgia O'Keeffe

I have always liked Georgia O’Keeffe. I guess she is a feminist icon, or was, and that’s fine, but they will have to share her. I simply saw her as an independent and uniquely American artist who painted the Southwest and lived life on her own terms. I like that.

Map and photo of the road to Ghost Ranch and Abiquiu, New Mexico, where Georgia O'Keeffe lived and painted the Southwest.

Recently, I enjoyed the movie O’Keeffe and Stieglitz – An American Romance (from Benita Eisler’s book). So I thought I would write something about O’Keeffe and a painting I did several years ago that was a spinoff of her Cow's Skull - Red, White and Blue. She wrote the following about Cow's Skull in her biography, Georgia O’Keeffe.

When I arrived at Lake George I painted a horse’s skull — then another horse’s skull. After that came a cow’s skull on blue. In my Amarillo days cows had been such a part of the country I couldn’t think of it without them. As I was working I thought of the city men I had been seeing in the East. They talked so often about writing the Great American Novel — the Great American Play — the Great American Poetry. I am not sure they aspired to the Great American Painting. Cezanne was so much in the air that I think the Great American Painting didn’t even seem a possible dream. I knew the middle of the country — knew quite a bit of the South — I knew cattle country — and I knew that our country was lush and rich. I had driven across the country many times. I was quite excited over our country and I knew that at any time almost any one of those great minds would have been living Europe if it had been possible for them. They didn’t even want to live in New York — how was the Great American thing going to happen? So as I painted along on my cow’s skull on blue I thought to myself, “I’ll make it an American painting. They will not think it great with the red stripes down the sides — Red, White and Blue — but they will notice it. -Georgia O'Keeffe

The elitists were the same then as now.

My painting is of my wife, Patty, a school teacher (as was O’Keeffe for a time) who also has a deep love of America. I thought to myself how appropriate and fun it would be to paint Patty with an O’Keeffe-like red, white and blue background. The boxing gloves were included because we were teaching cardio kickboxing at the time at a health club. It was all a lot of fun.