Georgia O'Keeffe was simple and natural with her hair. I'm not there yet -- grey or natural. But I'm a big fan of O'Keeffe. She took the natural landscape and with her sense of seeing, created her art with such a modern twist, unlike her hair. She became my second-favorite artist when I was still in my teens (after Andrew Wyeth). This year the O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe is celebrating its tenth anniversary.
O'Keeffe might not have made her mark, found her style, come into her own had she not come to this place, this land that spoke to her soul. Perhaps she might not have had the courage to pursue her vision had it not been for the encouragement of other women.
She came to New Mexico for the first time in 1929 with a girlfriend (the wife of Paul Strand, friend of O'Keeffe's husband) and went to visit Mabel Dodge Luhan. Luhan, an eastern heiress married to a Taos Indian, Tony Luhan, reported that O'Keeffe exclaimed on that first visit, "This is wonderful. No one told me it was like this."
Now lots of people know about Santa Fe, the New Mexico high desert and O'Keeffe, the latter especially with her nakesake museum that has so many of her paintings referencing this land, sharing her vision of how she captured her surroundings. What would her life had been like had she not ventured out with a girlfriend, had she fussed a lot with her hair or had she not owned (and shared) her sense of place?
Art: a way of being, living, caring, sharing and creating.
On the opposite idea of modern art and place, art patron Stanley
Marsh supported art in the land (rather than of the land) that makes you stop and think. This
Panhandle blogger caught the latest news out of Amarillo on outdoor art not bounded or contained by walls.
Hmmm. Something to think about. Although, I'm turning inward on this one. Imagine what I would be ... stop.
Posted by: SusieJ | July 30, 2007 at 10:14 AM