Georgia O'Keeffe (1887 - 1986)

Born on a Wisconsin dairy farm on November 15, 1887, Georgia O'Keeffe knew that she wanted to be an artist by the time she was in the eighth grade. She traveled constantly - between 1905 and 1916, she had lived in Chicago, New York, Virginia, Texas, and South Carolina, and survived a bout with typhoid fever!

Unfortunately, she became ill during the influenza epidemic of 1917 and had to resign from her teaching job in Texas. Since first seeing her work, the famous photographer and gallery owner Alfred Stieglitz had been fascinated by her and eventually they fell in love. Georgia returned to New York in 1918, and in Fall 1924 they were married. During that winter she began to paint the huge flowers for which she is so famous. She lived in New York for four years, but in 1928, felt the urge to travel again. Stieglitz didn't want to leave, so Georgia headed west to Taos, New Mexico with a friend, and one look told her that this was the place she wanted to live. She even bought a car and learned how to drive so she could go exploring by herself.

For the next 18 years, she traveled to Taos every year where she collected odds and ends to paint when she returned to New York. In 1940 she purchased a property called Ghost Ranch, which became her main home in New Mexico. After her husband died in 1946 she moved there permanently, but still continued to travel throughout the world.

In 1971, she began to lose her central vision because of eye degeneration and in 1972 she stopped painting. With the encouragement of a young local potter name Juan Hamilton, she started doing pottery in 1973 and even a little painting. She died on March 6, 1986 at age 98.

Georgia O'Keeffe is known for her large brightly colored pictures of exotic flowers and unique paintings of the Southwest landscape that she loved so much. She worked in oils, charcoal, pastels, and watercolors, and late in life in clay. As a student, she had learned new theories about line, color, and notan, an ancient Japanese art technique that balances the light and dark, or "positive and negative spaces." Inspired by the incredible scenery of New Mexico, O'Keeffe created her own style that was realistic, modern, and unique.