Georgia O’Keeffe is one of the most renowned 20th Century American artists.. She was born in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin on November 15, 1887 and was the second of seven children in her family. From a young age, O’Keeffe  loved art and in high school, and she knew she wanted to make her own way as an artist. She left her home to then study art at not one but two schools: The Art institute of Chicago and the Art Students League of New York. At these schools she began to learn more

traditional art techniques and had a very developed skill set. After her years of art school, she studied under Arthur Wesley Dow. Dow was less of a traditionalist in terms of art and O’Keeffe picked up her own more defined art style after four years. Dow allowed her to think outside the box and beyond what she had learned. O’Keeffe then would push the limits of what the art world was familiar with at the time. While studying under Dow she also taught art in public schools in Texas and then went on to teach what is now A&M University in Canyon, Texas. 

For the first time in 1916, O’Keeffe sent her work off to one of her close friends in New York City. These paintings were highly abstract and not common for a time period where modernism in art was growing. This friend showed them to Alfred Stieglitz, an art photographer and art dealer. He saw O’Keeffe’s art and put it in her first ever exhibition. This would make her career soar and in four years she would already be seen as one of the best young artists. She would also end up marrying Alfred Stieglitz and they would grow old together. Her art became a symbol of modernity, especially her New York skyscraper paintings. 

Over one summer in 1929, O’Keeffe traveled to New Mexico for the first time. She fell in love with the atmosphere and environment almost immediately. This sparked a new direction for her, and landscape paintings of New Mexico would become what she is most known for. She spent the summers of the next two decades in New Mexico and finally moved there permanently in 1949, three years after Stieglitz had died. 

Throughout the 1950’s O’Keeffe continued to paint pictures of New Mexico but she also continued to paint other landscapes of all the new places she visited. She saw and painted everything from Mount Fuji in Japan to the peaks of Peru. She saw famous landmarks throughout the whole world even as her eyesight was worsening from macular degeneration. At the age of 85 she painted her last artwork completely unassisted, but she persevered through her vision loss and continued to do what she loved. In 1977 she hired assistants to help her paint from her imagination and memories of her favorite places she had visited. She then died in 1986 at the age of 98.

O’Keeffe still lives through her art and speaks to the viewer as they see her colorful and abstract visions of landscapes, flowers, and colorful style. She was an award winning artist and her art won the National Medal of Arts in 1985, the year before she passed. She now has a museum filled with her art and life story in her beloved home of New Mexico. Some of her most famous works include Ram’s Head, White Hollyhock-Hills, An Orchid, and My Front Yard, Summer, 1941.