Quotessence
Home / Authors / Georgia O'Keeffe
Georgia O'Keeffe

Georgia O'Keeffe Quotes

Artist

Filter quotes by topic

AllFlowerArtPaintingPaintThinkingWorldPeopleIfsArtistKnowsWayFeelsWantIdeasDecidedI CanInspirationalSeemsBeautifulImportant

Famous Georgia O'Keeffe Quotes

“School and things that painters have taught me even keep me from painting as I want to. I decided I was a very stupid fool not to be at least paint as I wanted to and say what I wanted to when I painted as that seemed to be the only thing I could do that didn't concern anybody but myself. I found that I could say things with colour and shapes that I couldn't say in any other way things that I had no words for.”

WayWantWantedSchoolFoundStupidTaughtPaintingFoolShapesConcernDecidedPaintPainterColourVery Stupid
Author:Georgia O'Keeffe
Create image

“I find that I have painted my life, things happening in my life - without knowing. After painting the shell and shingle many times, I did a misty landscape of the mountain across the lake, and the mountain became the shape of the shingle - the mountain I saw out my window, the shingle on the table in my room. I did not notice that they were alike for a long time after they were painted.”

LongRoomsKnowingSawsPaintingShapesMountainLong TimeHappeningsWindowTablesThings HappenLandscapeLakesShellsMistyShingles
Book:Georgia O'Keeffe
Create image

“On the way I stood a moment looking out across the marshes with tall cattails, a patch of water, more marsh, then the woods with a few birch trees shining white at the edge on beyond. In the darkness it all looked just like I felt. Wet and swampy and gloomy, very gloomy. In the morning I painted it. My memory of it is that it was probably my best painting that summer.”

WayMomentsFeltWaterMemoriesWhiteMorningDarknessTreePaintingSummerShiningEdgesWoodsTallWetPatchesGloomyMarshesBirch Trees
Author:Georgia O'Keeffe
Create image

“The clean clear colours were in my head. But one day as I looked at the brown burned wood of the Shanty, I thought 'I can paint one of those dismal-coloured paintings like the men. I think just for fun I will try - all low-toned and dreary with the tree besides the door.' In my next show, 'The Shanty' went up. The men seemed to approve of it. They seemed to think that maybe I was beginning to paint. That was my only low-toned dismal-coloured painting.”

ThinkingMenTryingI CanShowsNextFunClearDoorsTreeHe ManPaintingOne DayLowsCleanPaintWoodsColourBrownBurnedDrearyJust For Fun
Author:Georgia O'Keeffe
Create image

“So, probably … when I started painting the pelvis bones I was most interested in the holes in the bones — what I saw through them- particularly the blue from holding them up in the sun against the sky as one is apt to do when one seems to have more sky than earth in one’s world … they were most beautiful against the Blue — that Blue that will always be there as it is now after all man’s destruction is finished.”

MenWorldSeemsEarthBeautifulSunSawsSkyPaintingDestructionBlueBonesFinishedHoles
Book:An enduring spirit: the art of Georgia O'Keeffe
Create image