Georgia O'Keeffe Quotations

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.

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

The days you work are the best days.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

I decided to start anew, to strip away what I had been taught.

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.

I feel there is something unexplored about woman that only a woman can explore.

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.

Nobody sees a flower really; it is so small. We haven't time, and to see takes time - like to have a friend takes time.

I often lay on that bench looking up into the tree, past the trunk and up into the branches. It was particularly fine at night with the stars above the tree.

You get whatever accomplishment you are willing to declare.

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

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

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

Anyone who doesn't feel the crosses simply doesn't get that country.

I've been absolutely terrified every moment of my life - and I've never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do.

One can not 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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

He was nothing but a tool. ... He had no thought, no part in the painting, except that he could do what I told him to do.

I've been absolutely terrified every moment of my life -- and I've never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do.

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.

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

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.

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...

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

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

I decided to accept as true my own thinking.

I like an empty wall because I can imagine what I like on it.

I get out my work and have a show for myself before I have it publicly. I make up my own mind about it-how good or bad or indifferent it is. After that, the critics can write what they please. I have already settled it for myself so flattery and criticism go down the same drain and I am quite free.

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.

A flower is relatively small... Still in a way-nobody sees a flower-so I said to myself-I'll paint it big.

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.

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.

You write about my flower as if I think and see what you think and see of the flower - and I don't.

Imagination makes you see all sorts of things.

I wish people were all trees and I think I could enjoy them then.

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.

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.

I want real things ... music that makes holes in the sky.

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

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?

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

It seems to be my mission in life to wait on a dog.

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

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)

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

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.

To make your unknown known - that's the important thing.

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.

A flower touches everyone's heart.

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

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.

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 ...

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.

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.

You are one of my nicest thoughts.

There is something so perfect about the mountains and the lake and the trees... sometimes I want to tear it all to pieces.

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.

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.

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.

I look at my work and make up my mind about it. After that, neither flattery nor criticism matters to me.

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

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.

So, probably … when I started painting the pelvis bones I was most interested in the holes in the bones — what I saw through them- particularly the blue from holding them up in the sun against the sky as one is apt to do when one seems to have more sky than earth in one’s world … they were most beautiful against the Blue — that Blue that will always be there as it is now after all man’s destruction is finished.

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

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.

If only people were trees… I might like them better.

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

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

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

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.

The meaning of a word - to me - is not as exact as the meaning of a color. Colors and shapes make a more definite statement than words.

Happiness goes like the wind, but what is interesting stays.

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.

Interest is the most important thing in life; happiness is temporary, but interest is continuous.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Slits in nothingness are not very easy to paint.

It is really so nice here-country-busy-busy with so many different kinds of things-... I must say I feel far away in another world here-... always we go to a new place...the people have a kind of gentleness that isn't usual on the mainland.

I can't live where I want to, I can't go where I want to go, I can't do what I want to, I can't even say what I want to. I decided I was a very stupid fool not to at least paint as I wanted to.

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.

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 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.

I find that I have painted my life - things happening in my life - without knowing.