Notes on: To Paint Is to Live: Georgia O'Keeffe, 1887-1986

Strength, clarity, and strong physical presence are words that are often used to describe O'Keeffe's paintings. Georgia O'Keeffe was an unusually talented American female artist. She was born on a vast farm and throughout her life, preferred vast plains to city living. She took American art education private strict lessons and although talented, the teachers often criticized the larger-than-life porportions she liked to paint. She was unspoiled by studies in Europe and painted with a direct, clear, strong---even fierce---force. At an early age she was already moving away from realistic copying of objects to things she perceived with her own eyes, mind, and soul. She got disapointed with the rigidity of American art education. She decided to reject the rigidity of the realism that she had been taught for a style all her own. "Nothing is less realisitc than realism---details are confusing. It is only by selection, by elimination, by emphasis, that we get the real meaning of things."

"A hill or a tree caot make a good painting just because it is a hill or a tree. It is lines and colors put together so that they say something. For me, that is the very basis for painting. The abstraction is often the most definite form for the intangible thing in myself that I can only clarify in paint."

برچسبها: Georgia O, Keeffe, Realism, Mother of American Modernism, Skyscrapers of New York