The Art of Georgia O’Keeffe 1887-1986

When you google Georgia O’Keeffe you get lots of pictures of her rather than her artwork. Here she is young and old. She worked as an artist all her life. She painted in oils and watercolour, and worked with pencil, charcoal and clay.

O' Keeffe studied in Chicago, New York, and Virginia. She became an art teacher (so she must be cool!) in Texas & created beautiful drawings in charcoal. She started to experiment with abstract art. She liked to draw curving lines with lots of shading. She even made some abstract paintings based on the things she saw in nature, of shells, bones and flowers

Drawing turned into a painting. 

She is perhaps most famous for painting flowers. We’re primarily going to look at her flowers and the painting techniques she using in her flower paintings.  She used acrylic, we’re going to use watercolour.

"A flower is relatively small, so I’ll paint what I see…what the flower is to me but I’ll paint it big and everyone will be surprised into taking time to look at it…” Georgia O’Keefe She produced large close-ups of things like flowers, something few artists had done before.

She also painted abstract art. What do you think this is?

She also painted things like this - the world around her She also painted things like this - the world around her! Architecture & landscape. Note how her painting technique looks the same. Especially in the landscapes; parts of those landscapes could be petals.

Skull in landscape. How easy to you think it was to make the paint go from light to dark in the background?

In her later years O’ Keeffe’s work became more abstract In her later years O’ Keeffe’s work became more abstract. Look how beautifully she is handling the paint and smoothly graduating it. Which do you prefer, her abstract or representational work?

This is one of her most famous paintings This is one of her most famous paintings. It is called ‘Oriental Poppies’. If I gave you all a bunch of flowers to draw, and you hadn’t see O’Keeffe’s work, do you think you would draw the whole bunch or would you have thought to zoom in a paint a close-up?