Georgia O'Keeffe Art Quotations

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

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.

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.

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

I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way - things I had no words for.

I decided that if I could paint that flower in a huge scale, you could not ignore its beauty.

I had to create an equivalent for what I felt about what I was looking at - not copy it.

I often painted fragments of things because it seemed to make my statement as well as or better than the whole could.

One can't paint New York as it is, but rather as it is felt.

Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing.

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.

Filling a space in a beautiful way - that is what art means to me.

The abstraction is often the most definite form for the intangible thing in myself that I can clarify in paint.

So I said to myself-I'll paint what I see-what the flower is to me but 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.

I long ago came to the conclusion that even if I could put down accurately the thing I saw and enjoyed, it would not give the observer the kind of feeling it gave me. I had to create an equivalent for what I felt about what I was looking at-not copy it.

Bement was a very good teacher but he was a very poor painter. I guess he wasn't a painter at all. He had no courage and I believe that to create one's own world in any of the arts takes courage.

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

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

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.

I like to convey the idea that art is important in everyday life.