I’ve loved the work of
Georgia O’Keefe for so long, I don’t even remember now how I first discovered her. I had posters of her flower paintings on my bedroom wall when I was in high school. Back then, I think I was mostly drawn to the formal qualities of the colors and organic forms... I don’t think I really understood the broader implications of her work.
Poppies
Later, I came to love the flowers’ visceral suggestion of human (particularly female) flesh. I’ve always been fascinated by aggressive art by strong women—never wanting to be a “wilting flower” myself.
Ram’s Head
After she made a name for herself as an artist in New York City, O’Keefe moved to New Mexico where her work shifted to new subjects. Now that I’ve been living in the American West for a while myself, I’ve come to understand O’Keefe’s desert and skull paintings more clearly. I think one of the toughest challenges is to fully convey the beauty, spirituality, vastness, and harshness of western American desert landscapes.
Gerald’s Tree
Her skull and desert images share the aggressive qualities of the flower paintings, but there's something more contemplative about them, too... It is easy to infer that with age and wisdom, O’Keefe was forced to confront the idea of death and individual insignificance head-on, acknowledging the power of mother nature and her lack of sentimentality. Living in the New Mexico landscape probably heightened her awareness of these things.
O’Keefe’s painting of the dead desert juniper (above) reminds me of an idea I’ve been contemplating for some time now:
Skeleton Study #2 (Danielle Foushée)
Xerox transfer, ink, and gouache on paper.
10x13 inches. 2010.
I’ve been photographing numerous juniper skeletons in the Colorado and Utah deserts, knowing that there is something profound about them (yet, I can’t quite put my finger on it). The negative spaces left by the branches are so graphic and majestic, a relic of a life lived in the harshest of environments. I want to find a way to visually celebrate that sense of life and death and passing time in my own works of art.
