Tuesday, May 29, 2012

More quotes

From Georgia O'Keeffe, on the Cerro Pedernal in the Jemez Mountains near her home in Abiquiu:

"It's my private mountain. It belongs to me. God told me if I painted it enough, I could have it."

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In a letter to her husband Arthur Steiglitz in New York, O'Keeffe wrote in 1937 from Abiquiu:

"I've been up on the roof watching the moon come up--the sky very dark--the moon large and lopsided--and very soft--a strange white light creeping across the far away to the dark sky--the cliffs all black--it beautiful."

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O'Keeffe's friend, writer D.H. Lawrence wrote this about Taos, New Mexico:

"Never is the light more pure and overweening than there, arching with a royalty almost cruel over the hollow, uptilted world. It is so easy to understand that the Aztecs gave hearts of man to the sun...it is of a brilliant and unchallengeable purity and haughty serenity which would make one sacrifice the heart to it."

Saturday, May 12, 2012

Georgia's opinion of New Mexico

Georgia O'Keeffe was enchanted with New Mexico from her very first visits, and kept returning for many years until she moved here permanently in the 1940s.

On one of her early visits, she commented on her painting in the state:

"Half your work is done for you in New Mexico. Well. Well. Well. This is wonderful. No-one told me it was like this!"

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Problems with my blog

What in the world is going on with Google?

I have been trying to post pictures of spring flowers around my house for several weeks now, and finally have given up because the pictures will not post.

So instead I made a post about the Georgia O'Keefe book I am reading, and though I typed the post in paragraphs it is all jumbled together and I cannot edit successfully.

They apparently have switched the posting system, and it is nearly impossible to figure out, and when I thought I did, the post still does not look the way I typed it.

Bear with me....I am not giving up.

I will try another post soon and hope things go better.

(I am almost afraid to hit "publish" on this post and find that all the paragraphs I typed are jammed together into one paragraph.)

On Edit: I find that if I type in the paragraphs in HTML code it works. Is anyone else having this problem?,

Georgia O'Keeffe: Portrait of an Artist

I have been reading "Georgia O'Keeffe: Portrait of an Artist by Laurie Lisle.

To me, O'Keeffe is one of the most fascinating individuals to call New Mexico home.

After a long and successful career in New York City, she moved to New Mexico permanently at the age of 62, and lived here for the remainder of her life. She bought a ranch near Abiquiu, NM in the northern part of the state, and lived out the rest of her life there, painting landscapes and flowers and cattle skulls.

She was a fascinating woman, coming of age in a time where women were not always allowed to perform successfully as men. She was one of the first famous female painters in the United States.

My favorite part of the book was the second half, in which biographer Laurie Lisle chronicles O'Keeffe's years in New Mexico.

I recommend the book.

Cerro Pedernal, the mountain George O'Keefe loved, and where her ashes are scattered: