Georgia O'Keefe

Georgia O'Keefe Museum

Waterfall - No. III, 'Ioo Valley, 1939; this picture was painted on a trip to Hawaii with Ansel Adams, sponsored by Dole Pineapple.

Black Hollyhock Blue Larkspur, 1930

Black Mesa Landscape, 1930

Georgia O'Keeffe - Hands, 1919, photo by Alfred Stieglitz; Stieglitz photographed Georgia's hands with painting, Green Lines and Pink, 1919

Jimson Weed, 1932

Cottonwoods, 1952

The actual cottonwood trees that Georgia could see from her Abiquiu studio.

Abstraction, found in museum courtyard.

Abiquiu House and Studio

In December 1945, Georgia O'Keeffe purchased a 5,000 square foot, Spanish Colonial compound in Abiquiu, then in ruins, from the Archdiocese of Santa Fe. With her friend Maria Chabot, O'Keeffe spent the next 3 years restoring the 18th century structure.  By 1949, the property was habitable and O'Keeffe moved from New York to become a permanent resident of New Mexico.

The large window in this photo is to Georgia's bedroom, her studio is next to the bedroom.

Studio, the studio is just as O'Keeffe left it when she moved to Santa Fe in 1984 at the age of 96.  

After the main road was moved and paved, Georgia wrote about the view from her bedroom, "Two walls of my room in the Abiquiu house are glass and from one window I see the road toward Espanola, Santa Fe, and the world.  The road fascinates me with its ups and downs and finally it's wide sweeps as it speeds toward the wall of my hilltop to go past me.  I had made two or three snaps of it with a camera.  For one of them I turned the camera at a sharp angle to get all the road.  It was accidental that I made the road seem to standup in the air, but it amused me and I began drawing and painting it as a new shape.  The trees and mesa beside it were unimportant for that painting - it was just the road."

This is the view from her bedroom.

Blue Road, the same road viewed from her bedroom.

View from parking area at Abiquiu house.

Adobe wall surrounding compound.

Acequia or Irrigation ditch, water comes from a cistern higher on the mountain and fills this acequia once a week - the flood irrigation is enough to keep Georgia's gardens suffiently watered.

Garden gate 

Roofless room window, smaller Abstraction sculpture.  Georgia O'Keeffe chose to roof this room with screen, creating an enclosed space with interior access that is both inside and outside.

Hollyhocks

View of mountains in the distance, notice crude fence on this part of the property.

Pedernal

I thought this photo must have been the same view O'Keeffe saw when she painted the Pedernal below.  

Pedernal, 1942

I took several photos of the red hills as we drove the 18 miles from Abiquiu to Ghost Ranch.

Grey Hills, 1941

Ghost Ranch

The Cliff Chimneys, 1938

One of the many adobe cottages that can be rented at this spiritual retreat.  Georgia O'Keeffe bought an adobe house and 7 acres at Ghost Ranch, a dude ranch amid spectacular red and yellow cliffs.  Georgia learned to drive and outfitted her car as a mobile studio that she drove out into the desert to paint.  She lived at Ghost Ranch in the summer and Abiquiu in the winter.  Her home at Ghost Ranch is not open to the public but we were able to drive around and look at the amazing landscape.

Ghost House

Cholla

One last look at the Pedernal before heading back to Santa Fe.  What an amazing day!