One of the highlights of visiting O'Keeffe Country is to see her artwork up close and personal. That means a trip from Abiquiu, where we were staying in an adobe, to Santa Fe.
The museum is in the heart of the downtown area of Santa Fe. Parking is always a problem in a downtown area but we finally found a meter with a 3-hour limit. Since I knew the museum was small, that sounded like enough time.
I found it fitting that the museum was an adobe structure as that is the same structure of both her New Mexico homes in the Abiquiu village and on the Ghost Ranch. Apparently she moved with Juan Hamilton and his family to Santa Fe when she was ill and near the end of her life and needed to be near health care facilities. I found nothing that indicates where the Santa Fe home is located.
Tim decided to join a tour given by a docent but I roamed around on my own. We weren't allowed to take photos inside so I have downloaded some of the art that we saw. There were about 100 pieces of art on display but the museum owns more.
The pieces are rotated in and out so if visitors come back another year, they are likely to see something different.
Black hollyhock blue larkspur is one of my very favorite of Georgia's flowers. It is on display this year.
“Black Hollyhock Blue Larkspur,” 1930. Georgia O’Keeffe. Oil on canvas. 30 1/8 x 40 (76.5 x 101.6). Extended loan, private collection. c Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.
Another favorite is the Jimson Weed. She painted a series of these in the 1930s. The Indianapolis Museum of art has one, which we plan to go see soon.
"I decided that if I could paint that flower in a huge scale,
you could not ignore its beauty." Georgia O'Keeffe
This is one of the Cottonwood tree series. She painted cottonwoods on the ranch and on her Abiquiu village property.
Georgia loved the bleached bones she found on the desert. She said they did NOT signify death to her but beauty. One of my favorites is the skull with the calico flower.
"The bones seem to cut sharply to the center of something that is
keenly alive on the desert even tho' it is vast and empty
and untouchable... and knows no kindness with
all its beauty." Georgia O'Keeffe
She liked to hold a pelvic bone up to the sky and paint what she saw.
And always, her beloved Pedernal.
"It's my private mountain. It belongs to me.
God told me if I painted it enough,
I could have it." Georgia O'Keeffe
The Georgia O'Keeffe Cafe is next door to the museum but we did not go there.
Instead, we went two doors down to Sweet Lily's for a snack and coffee and tea to warm us up for our 5-minute walk back to the car.
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