Looking for the most famous quotes from popular painter Georgia O’Keeffe? We have rounded up the best collection of Georgia O’Keeffe quotes, sayings, ideas, and messages (with images and pictures) about art, nature, color, flowers, feminism, fear, and more to inspire you.
Georgia Totto O’Keeffe was a renowned American modernist artist known for her paintings of enlarged flowers, New Mexico landscapes, and New York cityscapes.
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O’Keeffe was best known for her constantly evolving modern art and has also been titled the “Mother of American modernism”.
She was one of the first female artists who was critically acclaimed worldwide for her significant contributions to modern art.
O’Keeffe experimented with abstract painting and her style of art revolved mostly around plant life and the outdoors. Most of her paintings are priced in millions.
Georgia O’Keeffe’s painting Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1 sold for $44.4 million which achieved the record for the highest auction bid for a female artist.
O’Keeffe lived with her husband Stieglitz in New York until 1929. During this time she created some of her best paintings of New York skyscrapers.
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She often made trips to New Mexico which was a big source of inspiration for her paintings of New Mexico landscapes and images of animal skulls. Later, after the death of her husband, she permanently shifted to New Mexico.
These amazing quotes by the American artist Georgia O’Keeffe will help you know what she felt about people, and her views on her work and will give you a glimpse into her life.
Famous Georgia O’Keeffe Quotes
- “Fill a space in a beautiful way.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
Georgia O’Keeffe Quotes
- “The days you work are the best days.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
Georgia O Keeffe Quotes
- “It’s not enough to be nice in life. You’ve got to have nerve.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
- “You get whatever accomplishment you are willing to declare.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
- “I feel there is something unexplored about woman that only a woman can explore.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
Quotes By Georgia O’Keefe
- “It is only by selection, by elimination, and by the emphasis that we get at the real meaning of things.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
- “I have lived on a razor’s edge. So what if you fall off – I’d rather be doing something I really wanted to do. I’d walk it again.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
- “I’ve been absolutely terrified every moment of my life – and I’ve never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
- “It seems I would rather feel starkly empty than let any thing be planted that cannot be tended to the fullest possibility of its growth.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
- “It seems to me very important to the idea of true democracy – to my country – and to the world eventually – that all men and women stand equal under the sky.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
Best Georgia O’Keeffe Quotes On Art & Painting
Georgia O’Keeffe became a legend in the world of art and painting. She was admired by a lot of women because of her badass attitude and her bold nature. She dared to do things that others weren’t able to do and therefore she had a great influence on artists of the following generations.
These famous artist quotes by the great Georgia O’Keeffe will inspire you to freely express yourself.
- “To create one’s world in any of the arts takes courage.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
Georgia O’Keeffe Quotes About Art
- “I got half-a-dozen paintings from that shattered plate.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
- “If I could say it in words, there would be no reason to paint.” – Georgia O’ Keeffe
Georgia O’Keeffe Quotes About Color
- “Filling a space in a beautiful way – that is what art means to me.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
- “I had it in my head, well, I couldn’t have been 12, that I was going to be a painter.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
- “I decided that if I could paint that flower in a huge scale, you could not ignore its beauty.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
Georgia O’Keeffe Sayings
- “The men liked to put me down as the best woman painter. I think I’m one of the best painters.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
Georgia O’Keeffe Quotes Feminism
- “You paint from your subject, not what you see… I rarely paint anything I don’t know very well.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
- “I don’t very much enjoy looking at paintings in general. I know too much about them. I take them apart.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
- “The painting is like a thread that runs through all the reasons for all the other things that make one’s life.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
- “I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way – things I had no words for.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
- “The abstraction is often the most definite form for the intangible thing in myself that I can only clarify in paint.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
- “I often painted fragments of things because it seemed to make my statement as well as or better than the whole could.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
- “I have painted portraits that to me are almost photographic. I remember hesitating to show the paintings, they looked so real to me.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
- “Singing has always seemed to me the most perfect means of expression. It is so spontaneous. And after singing, I think the violin. Since I cannot sing, I paint.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
- “Artists and religionists are never far apart, they go to the sources of revelation for what they choose to experience and what they report is the degree of their experiences.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
- “I can’t live where I want to, I can’t go where I want to go, I can’t do what I want to, I can’t even say what I want to. I decided I was a very stupid fool not to at least paint as I wanted to.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
- “I know now that most people are so closely concerned with themselves that they are not aware of their own individuality, I can see myself, and it has helped me to say what I want to say in paint.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
- “I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me – shapes and ideas so near to me – so natural to my way of being and thinking that it hasn’t occurred to me to put them down.” – Georgia O’ Keefe
- “I’ll tell you how I happened to make the blown-up flowers. In the twenties, huge buildings sometimes seemed to be going up overnight in New York. At that time I saw a painting by Fantin-Latour, a still-life with flowers I found very beautiful, but I realized that were I to paint the same flowers so small, no one would look at them because I was unknown. So I thought I’ll make them big like the huge buildings going up. People will be startled; they’ll have to look at them – and they did.” – Georgia O’ Keefe
Top Georgia O’Keeffe Quotes About Flowers
Georgia O’Keeffe’s every work had one common factor in them – they reflected the natural world, be it the season, landscapes, plants, animals, grass, or flowers.
Here is a list of flower quotes by the American artist! If you are enjoying these Georgia O’Keeffe quotes then check our collection of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Rumi quotes help you realize all the positivity, power and beauty within you.
- “A flower touches everyone’s heart.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
- “Imagination makes you see all sorts of things.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
Georgia O’Keeffe Quotes Images
- “If you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it’s your world for a moment.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
Georgia O’Keeffe Quotes Flowers
- “I hate flowers – I paint them because they’re cheaper than models and they don’t move.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
- “A flower is relatively small. Still in a way, nobody sees a flower, so I said to myself-I’ll paint it big.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
- “I have already settled it for myself so flattery and criticism go down the same drain and I am quite free.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
- “Nobody sees a flower really; it is so small. We haven’t time, and to see takes time – like to have a friend takes time.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
- “I do know the flower is painted large to convey my experience with the flower – and what is my experience if it is not the color?” – Georgia O’Keeffe
- “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.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
- “When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it’s your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else. Most people in the city rush around so, they have no time to look at a flower. I want them to see it whether they want to or not.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
Inspirational Georgia O’Keeffe Quotes
These motivational Georgia O’Keeffe quotes will inspire you and will give you an insight on art, nature, fear, and more.
- “You are one of my nicest thoughts.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
- “I’m getting to like you so tremendously that it sometimes scares me.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
- “Anyone who doesn’t feel the crosses simply doesn’t get that country.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
- “I’ve been afraid every single day of my life, but I’ve gone ahead and done it anyway.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
Georgia O’Keeffe Quotes About Life
- “It was all so far away – there was quiet and an untouched feel to the country and I could work as I pleased.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
- “The morning is the best time, there are no people around. My pleasant disposition likes the world with nobody in it.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
- “Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
- “Anyone with any degree of mental toughness ought to be able to exist without the things they like most, for a few months at least.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
- “Where I was born and where and how I have lived is unimportant. It is what I have done with where I have been that should be of interest.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
- “A week ago it was the mountains I thought the most wonderful, and today it’s the plains. I guess it’s the feeling of bigness in both that carries me away.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
- “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.”- Georgia O’Keeffe
- “It was in the 1920s when nobody had time to reflect that I saw a still-life painting with a flower that was perfectly exquisite, but so small you really could not appreciate it.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
- “Someone else’s vision will never be as good as your own vision of your self. Live and die with it ’cause in the end it’s all you have. Lose it and you lose yourself and everything else. I should have listened to myself.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
- “I think it’s so foolish for people to want to be happy. Happy is so momentary–you’re happy for an instant and then you start thinking again. Interest is the most important thing in life; happiness is temporary, but interest is continuous.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
- “I decided to start anew-to strip away what I had been taught, to accept as true my own thinking. This was one of the best times of my life. There was no one around to look at what I was doing, no one interested, no one to say anything about it one way or another. I was alone and singularly free, working into my own, unknown-no one to satisfy but myself. I began with charcoal and paper and decided not to use any color until it was impossible to do what I wanted to do in black and white. I believe it was June before I needed blue.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
Funny Georgia O’Keeffe Quotes
- “One can’t paint New York as it is, but rather as it is felt.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
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“I wish so much to go that I almost wish I had never been there.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
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“I wish people were all trees and I think I could enjoy them then.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
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“Marks on paper are free – free speech – press – pictures all go together I suppose.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
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“My friend Doris Bry says now that I’ve ruined her spelling because I misspell with such confidence.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
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“It’s my private mountain. It belongs to me. God told me if I painted that mountain enough, I could have it.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
Georgia O’Keeffe was born on November 15, 1887, in the town of Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. She started with art training in 1905, from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and later from the Art Students League of New York.
In 1908 she worked as an illustrator and teacher for two years to fund her education. She got married to Alfred Stieglitz after having an affair with him for a couple of years. He was a photographer and an art dealer.
And both of them developed a professional and personal relationship that resulted in their marriage.
He took several pictures of her and displayed them, most of which were nude. It created a public sensation and made most of people believe that Georgia’s work had undercurrents of sexuality, which was considered taboo back in those times.
Many people also believed that the flowers present in Georgia’s paintings symbolized female genitalia, which she bluntly denied.
In 1933, Georgia went through a nervous breakdown after knowing about her husband’s affair with someone else.
Later, after the death of her husband, she bought a ranch house and shifted to New Mexico permanently, and spent the last years of her life in Santa Fe.
Eleven years after her death, the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum was established in Santa Fe to dedicate the artistic legacy of Georgia O’Keeffe.
If you like these inspirational quotes about art from Georgia O’Keeffe then check out our collection of friendship quotes and spending time with friends quotes to rekindle your old memories of all the good times enjoyed with your buddies.
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