Georgia O'Keeffe quotes - page 2

I believe I would rather have Stieglitz like something - anything I had done - than anyone else I know. (Georgia O'Keeffe)
My first memory is of light -- the brightness of light -- light all around.
Georgia O'Keeffe
You are one of my nicest thoughts.
Georgia O'Keeffe
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.
Georgia O'Keeffe
The clean clear colours [of a Shanty farm] were in my head. But one day as I looked at the brown burned wood of the Shanty, I thought 'I can paint one of those dismal-coloured paintings like the men. I think just for fun I will try - all low-toned and dreary with the tree besides the door.' In my next show [c. 1923], 'The Shanty' went up. The men seemed to approve of it. They seemed to think that maybe I was beginning to paint.... that was my only low-toned dismal-coloured painting.
Georgia O'Keeffe
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.
Georgia O'Keeffe
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.
Georgia O'Keeffe
I know I cannot paint a flower. I can not paint the sun on the desert on a bright summer morning but maybe in terms of paint color 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.
Georgia O'Keeffe
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.
Georgia O'Keeffe
I decided to accept as true my own thinking.
Georgia O'Keeffe
Someone else's vision will never be as good as your own vision of your self. Live and die with it 'cause in the end it's all you have. Lose it and you lose yourself and everything else. I should have listened to myself. (Georgia O'Keeffe)
The days you work are the best days.
Georgia O'Keeffe
I had to create an equivalent for what I felt about what I was looking at - not copy it.
Georgia O'Keeffe
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.
Georgia O'Keeffe
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.
Georgia O'Keeffe
I don't very much enjoy looking at paintings in general. I know too much about them. I take them apart.
Georgia O'Keeffe
Marks on paper are free - free speech - press - pictures all go together I suppose.
Georgia O'Keeffe
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.
Georgia O'Keeffe
It was all so far away - there was quiet and an untouched feel to the country and I could work as I pleased.
Georgia O'Keeffe
You get whatever accomplishment you are willing to declare.
Georgia O'Keeffe
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. (Georgia O'Keeffe)
I often painted fragments of things because it seemed to make my statement as well as or better than the whole could.
Georgia O'Keeffe
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.
Georgia O'Keeffe
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.
Georgia O'Keeffe
I had wanted to talk with you about lots of things... I am anxious to get to work for the fall – it is always my best time I had one particular painting – that tree in Lawrence's front yard as you see it when you lie under it on the table – with stars – it looks as tho it is standing on its head – I wanted you to see it..
Georgia O'Keeffe