For some individuals, there are pivotal places and persons
that have such an impact on the work they do, that they are forever changed in
the work subsequent to the encounter. For Georgia O’Keefe, place was Lake
George and the person was Alfred Stieglitz. The exhibit
Georgia O’Keefe and Lake George demonstrates the artist’s seminal work of using nature as
inspiration, her work straddling between representational and abstract. In one
of her quotes, she states “nothing is less real than realism. Details are
confusing. It is only by selection, by elimination, by emphasis, that we get at
the real meaning of things.” This insightful statement is worth exploring the
way human focusing their vision among the myriad of things before their eyes,
selectively hearing the voice or tune from the noise of life.
“I found that I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way—things I had not words for.”
“It is surprising to me to see how many people separate the objective from the abstract. Objective painting is not good painting unless it is good in the abstract sense. A hill or tree cannot make a good painting just because is it is a hill or a tree. It is lines and colors put together so that they say something. For me that is the very basis of painting. The abstraction is often the most definitive form of the intangible thin in myself that I can only clarify in paint.”
“I said to myself—I’ll paint what I see—what the flower is to me, but I’ll paint it big and they will be surprised into taking time to look at it –I will make even busy New Yorkers take time to see what I see of flowers.”
“I made you take time to look at what I saw, and when you took time to really notice my flower, you hung all your associations with flowers on my flower, and you write about my flower as if I think and see what you think and see—and I don’t.”
“I have painted portraits that to me are almost photographic. I remember hesitating to show the paintings, they looked so real to me. But they have passed into the world as abstractions—no one seeing what they are.” –Gray Green Abstraction, 1931.
"I believe It was the work that kept me with him though I loved him as a human being…. I put up with what seemed to me a good deal of nonsense because of what seemed clear and bright and wonderful.” Dark & Lavender Leaves 1931, on why O’Keefe remained married with Stielglitz even though he had been unfaithful.
“If people were trees…I might like them better.”
