1. The Art of Georgia O’Keeffe
We are going to be looking at the art of Georgia O’Keeffe to inspire a ‘Close-Ups’ project.
Has anyone heard of her? If yes, what do you think of when you hear her name?
How old was she when she died? (99)

2. 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. When she was very old she had a technician to help her.

3. 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

4. Drawing turned into a painting.  We’re going to use our drawings!

5. 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.

6. "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
Why do you think I have chosen her for our close-ups project?

7. She also painted abstract art. What do you think this is
She also painted abstract art. What do you think this is? Are you influenced by her flower paintings? What is abstract art?

8. She also painted things like this
She also painted things like this. How could you describe 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.

9. “In New Mexico I was surprised that there were so few flowers… Bones were easy to collect,
so I painted a number of horse skulls and then cows skulls. I will make an American Painting,
of red white and blue.”
(The quote refers to the first painting.)
Trips and then living in Mexico
In the 1930s, O’Keeffe took some trips to New Mexico. She loved it so much that she eventually moved there.
She painted lots of paintings of the mountains, the desert, and houses.
She especially loved to paint pictures of animal skulls. What do you notice is included with the second skull? Yes! Flowers! Sometimes she even painted desert landscapes and skulls on the same canvases – see next slide!

10. Skull in landscape.
How easy to you think it was to make the paint go from light to dark in the background?
We are going to have a go at doing this with watercolour.

11. 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?

12. This is a favourite of mine and one of her most famous paintings
This is a favourite of mine and 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?

13. What next?
What next?
We are going to draw natural forms in lots of different media, we are going to learn some different watercolour techniques that we can use in our work. We are going to create our own compositions and create an abstract painting.